John Locke Essay Competition · 2026 questions
John Locke International Relations Essay Questions
International Relations joined the competition in 2026, so there are no past questions and no published winning essays yet. That is an opportunity: the judges have no house style to compare you against, and the first cohort of essays will set it.
The 2026 questions below are the official set. The 2027 questions are expected in late January 2027 and this page will carry them within 48 hours.
The 2026 International Relations questions, one by one
Quoted verbatim from the John Locke Institute. For each: what the examiners are testing, where strong students lose marks, the argument lines that hold up over 2,000 words, and what to read before you write.
What it is really asking
The Sachs-versus-Easterly debate, now with two decades of randomised evidence. The judges want you to distinguish kinds of aid and kinds of effect, and to know the data.
The trap
Choosing a side from a book title. The credible answer is conditional, and the conditions are the essay.
Lines of argument that can carry 2,000 words
- Macro aid and growth: the cross-country evidence is weak and contested (Burnside and Dollar versus Easterly); aid can crowd out taxation and prop up bad governments.
- Micro aid and lives: bed nets, deworming, cash transfers have strong randomised evidence (Banerjee, Duflo, Kremer). "Poor people" in the question points here.
- The Dutch-disease and governance channel: aid inflows can hurt through exchange rates and by weakening the state's accountability to taxpayers (Moyo, Deaton). Weigh against the micro evidence.
Read first
- The Great Escape, Angus Deaton (chapter 7, on aid)
- Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
- The White Man's Burden, William Easterly (against The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs)
What the judges reward in International Relations
The official criteria are knowledge and understanding, competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. In this category that means:
- 1Command of the empirical literature, including the randomised and quasi-experimental studies where they exist.
- 2A theoretical frame (realism, liberalism, political economy) used to organise evidence, not to substitute for it.
- 3Distinctions between kinds of effect: aggregate and distributional, short-run and long-run.
- 4Awareness that the question is contested among serious scholars, and a reason for siding with one camp.
No published winning essay yet
International Relations was introduced in 2026, so the Institute has not yet published a winning essay in this category. The closest models are the published Economics, Politics-adjacent and Philosophy winners, which we take apart paragraph by paragraph in our guide to the published essays.
Past winning essays, analysedHow to prepare for the 2027 International Relations questions before they are released
- 1
Read one review article per question (the Annual Review of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives are the right level).
- 2
Build a table of studies: what was measured, where, what was found. Cite from it.
- 3
Choose the question where you can name the two scholars who disagree and say who is right about what.
- 4
Because there are no past IR essays to imitate, read a first-prize Economics or Politics essay for register.
John Locke Essay Competition prep for International Relations
John Locke Basics
12 group sessions plus 6 hours of 1-on-1 mentorship, from question choice to a submission-ready draft. 38 of our 41 students were shortlisted in 2026.
Questions about the International Relations category
It is worth serious consideration. The category was introduced in 2026, so there are no past winning essays to set expectations and the pool is smaller than Politics or Economics. The 2026 questions are empirical and reward students who know the aid, trade and institutions literatures; a student with strong economics is well placed.
The other nine categories
John Locke guides
The complete guide
Eligibility, rules, dates, judging and prizes in one place.
John Locke Essay Competition prep
All four programmes, compared, with the 2026 results and the 2027 timeline.
Deadline and timeline 2027
Every date, confirmed or expected, on one page.
The interview after shortlisting
What the Institute says, what students report, how to prepare.
Past winning essays, analysed
The seven published prize essays, paragraph by paragraph.
Is it prestigious, and worth entering?
What a shortlist, commendation or prize is worth in admissions.
Free essay planner
Question deconstruction, argument map and self-audit sheet.
2027 dates and changes tracker
What is confirmed, what is expected, and every 2026 rule change.
The competition from Dubai and the UAE
How the calendar sits against UAE school terms and exam seasons.