Introduction: The Pertinence of the ‘International’

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: to examine what is meant by the term ‘international’ and the confusion it occasions, and secondly to provide a brief account of the growth in the discipline, and the factors underlying this development. International Relations (IR) has occupied an uneasy, often marginal, place in the study and teaching of the social sciences. Yet its subject matter is, in the simplest terms, clear enough, comprising three forms of interaction — relations between states, non-state or ‘transnational’ relations across frontiers, and the operations of the system as a whole, within which states and societies are the main components. While they may vary in the stress they lay on each of these, all theories of the ‘international’ propose some explanation of each: indeed the major debates within IR revolve, to a greater or lesser extent, around these three dimensions and the primacy of one or the other.