‘world politics’ rather than ‘international politics’ or ‘international

relations’? Th ese are the traditional terms used to describe the kinds of
structures and processes covered in this book, such as the causes of war
and peace or the global economy and its inequalities. Indeed, the discipline
that studies these issues is nearly always called International Relations. We
will say more about this discipline shortly. Th e point here is that we believe
the phrase ‘world politics’ is more inclusive than either of the alternative
terms ‘international relations’ or ‘international politics’.
’. It is meant to signal that thereis a very wide set of actors and
political relations in the world, and not only those among nation-states
(as implied by ‘international relations’ or ‘international
politics’).relations among institutions and organizations that may or
may not be states.
the political and power relations, broadly defi ned, that characterize
the contemporary world. Many will be between states, but many—and
perhaps most—will not.

International Relations (IR) is an incredibly exciting and diverse field of

study. It is exciting because it addresses the most pressing problems
shaping the lives of everyone on the planet: the global environmental
catastrophe, pandemics, matters of war and peace, the organization of the
global economy, the causes and consequences of global inequality, to name
just a few of the most obvious. The key concepts that organize debate in
the field are also some of the most contentious: power, violence,
sovereignty, states, empire, genocide, intervention, inequality, justice, and
democracy.
The field is highly diverse, organized into various subfields and specialisms,
including international history, international security, international political
economy, international law, and international organizations. Scholars of
International Relations also often work with regional specialisms, focusing
on Latin America, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, or North
America.
International Relations is also highly interdisciplinary, drawing on
theoretical and methodological traditions from fields as diverse as History,
Law, Political Science, Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, Gender Studies,
and Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies.
In Britain, historians were most influential in the earliest decades of the
organized study of international relations (Hall 2012). In more recent years,
especially after the end of the Second World War, and especially in the
United States, Political Science has tended to have the greatest influence
on the discipline of International Relations. This tended to narrow the range
of acceptable approaches to the study of IR, and also led to an excessive
focus on US foreign policy, to the detriment of non-Western history and
theories of world politics. However, both inside and outside the United
States, scholars have started to pay much more attention to how and why
IR has neglected non-Western histories and experiences, and have begun to
rectify this (Tickner and Wæver 2009). In doing so, they have increasingly
moved the field away from Eurocentric approaches to world politics, and
begun to take seriously the project of developing a Global IR.
The history of the discipline of IR is itself contested. One of the most
influential accounts of its history is that the academic discipline was formed
in 1919 when the Department of International Politics was established at
the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University).
The Department of International Politics was founded after the horrors of
the First World War to help prevent a future war. If scholars could find the
causes of war, then they could put forward solutions to help politicians
prevent wars from breaking out. According to this view, the discipline of IR
was—or should be—marked by such a commitment to changing the world;
the task of academic study should be one of making the world a better
place.
Others have challenged this story as a foundation myth for a field with a
much darker history, situating the emergence of IR somewhat earlier in the
history of colonial administration and the study of imperialism.
For example, the first journal in the field was called the Journal of Race
Development, first published in 1910, and which is now the influential US-
based publication known as Foreign Affairs.
The beginning of the twentieth century was not only a period of world war,
but also one of empire, theft of land, and belief in racial supremacy—that
is, maintaining and justifying white supremacy in world politics. In the
United States, African-American scholars interested in studying race and
world politics were systematically marginalized from the emerging
discipline of IR. Indeed, even more recently scholars have started to
decentre the origin story of International Relations, pointing to its multiple
origins around the world.

International Relations:
A survey of the field suggests that a number of different definitions are
employed. For some, international relations means the diplomatic–
strategic relations of states, and the characteristic focus of IR is on issues of
war and peace, conflict and cooperation.
Others see international relations as being about cross-border transactions
of all kinds, political, economic and social, and IR is as likely to study trade
negotiations or the operation of non-state institutions such as Amnesty
International as it is conventional peace talks or the workings of the United
Nations (UN).
Again, and with increasing frequency in the twenty-first century, some
focus on globalization, studying, for example, world communication,
transport and financial systems, global business corporations and the
putative emergence of a global society.
IR is the study of the relations of states, and that those relations are
understood primarily in diplomatic, military and strategic terms – this
is certainly the way in which diplomats, historians and most scholars
of IR have defined the subject.
The distinguishing feature of the state is sovereignty. This is a difficult
term, but at its root is the idea of legal autonomy. Sovereign states
are sovereign because no higher body has the right to issue orders to
them. In practice some states may have the ability to influence the
behaviour of other states, but this influence is a matter of power not
authority.
To put the matter differently, the conventional account of
international relations stresses the fact that the relationship between
states is one of anarchy. Anarchy in this context does not necessarily
mean lawlessness and chaos; rather it means the absence of a formal
system of government.
There is in international relations no formal centre of authoritative
decision-making such as exists, in principle at least, within the state.
This is why a stress is placed traditionally on diplomacy and strategy;
although the term‘international politics’ is often used loosely in this
context, international relations are not really political, because, again
on the traditional account, politics is about authority and government
and there is no international authority in the conventional sense of the
term.
Instead of looking to influence government to act on their behalf, the
participants in international relations are obliged to look after their own
interests and pursue them employing their own resources – we live in, as
the jargon has it, a self-help system. Because it is a self-help system,
security is the overriding concern of states and diplomacy, the exercise of
influence, exists in a context where force is, at the very least, a possibility.
The possibility that force might be exercised is what makes the state –
which actually possesses and disposes of armed force – the key
international actor. Other bodies are secondary to the state, and the
myriad of other activities that take place across state boundaries,
economic, social, cultural and so on, are equally secondary to the
diplomatic-strategic relations of states.
There is indeed a world that works like this, in which diplomats and soldiers
are the key actors, and there are parts of the world where it would be very
unwise of any state not to be continually conscious of security issues – in
the Middle Eastern ‘Arc of Conflict’, for example. Moreover, it is striking
that even those states that feel most secure can find themselves suddenly
engaged in military conflict for reasons that could not have been predicted
in advance. Few predicted in January 1982 that Britain and Argentina would
go to war over the Falklands/Malvinas later that year, or, in January 1990,
that an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would lead to a major war in the Gulf in
1990–1, but it is the nature of the international system that it throws up
this kind of surprise.
For all that, physical violence and overt conflict are nowhere near as
central to international relations as the traditional description of the
subject would suggest. Most countries, most of the time, live at peace with
their neighbours and the world at large. Transactions take place across
borders – movements of people, goods, money, information and ideas – in
a peaceful, routine way. We take it for granted that a letter posted in
Britain or Australia to Brazil, the United States or South Africa will be
delivered. Using the Internet we can order a book or a CD from another
country, confident that our credit card will be recognized and honoured. A
cursory examination of the nearest kitchen, wardrobe or hi-fi rack will
reveal goods from all around the world. We plan our holidays abroad
without more than a passing thought about the formalities of border
crossing. What is truly remarkable is that we no longer find all this
remarkable – at least not within the countries of the advanced industrial
world. These developments seem, at least on the surface, to be very
positive, but there are other things that happen across borders nowadays
that are less welcome, such as problems of pollution and environmental
degradation, the drugs and arms trade, international terrorism and other
international crimes – these factors pose threats to our security, although
not in quite the same way as war and violent conflict.
States remain the central actors in international relations. They control, or
at least try to control, the borders over which transactions take place, and
they claim, sometimes successfully, to regulate the international activities
of their citizens. They issue passports and visas, make treaties with each
other with the intention of managing trade flows and matters of copyright
and crime, and set up international institutions in the hope of controlling
world finance or preventing environmental disasters.
. States do indeed try to do all these things but often they do not succeed.
Too many of these cross-border activities are in the hands of private
organizations such as international firms, or take place on terrains where it
is notoriously difficult for states to act effectively, such as international
capital markets. Often the resources possessed by non-state actors – non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) – are greater than those of at least
some of the states which are attempting to regulate them. Moreover, the
institutions that states set up to help them manage this world of complex
interdependence tend to develop a life of their own, so that bodies such as
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Trade Organization
(WTO) end up out of the control of even the strongest of the states that
originally made them. Frequently, states are obliged to engage in a form of
diplomacy with these actors, recognizing them as real players in the game
rather than simply as instruments or as part of the stakes for which the
game is played.
For this reason, some think the focus of the discipline should be on
cross-border transactions in general, and the ways in which states and
non-state actors relate to each other. States may still be, much of the
time, the dominant actors, but this is a pragmatic judgement rather
than a matter of principle and, in any event, they must always
acknowledge that on many issues other players are in the game.
International relations is a complex, issue-sensitive affair in which the
interdependence of states and societies is as striking a feature as
their independence.
The more interesting issues nowadays revolve around the politics of
globalization; are these new global trends reinforcing or undermining the
existing divide in the world between rich and poor? Is globalization another
name for global capitalism, or, perhaps, in the cultural realm,
Americanization? One radical approach to International Relations –
sometimes called structuralism or centre–periphery analysis – has always
stressed the existence of global forces, a world structure in which dominant
interests/ classes largely – but not entirely – located in the advanced
industrial world, dominate and exploit the rest of the world, using
economic, political and military means to this end.
the first globalization took place at the end of the nineteenth century,
but collapsed with the outbreak 6 Understanding International
Relations of war in 1914 – will the second globalization end in the
same way, perhaps a casualty of the events of 9/11 and the
subsequent ‘war on terror’?
Narrowly defined, the field of international relations (IR) concerns the
relationships among the world’s governments. But these relationships
cannot be understood in isolation. They are closely connected with
other actors (such as international organizations, multinational
corporations, and individuals), with other social structures and
processes (including economics, culture, and domestic politics), and
with geographical and historical influences. These elements together
power the central trend in IR today—globalization.