The study of international politics is the examination of relationships among nations that do not acknowledge a common supreme authority. These relations can be characterized by conflict and adjustment. It is the nature of this process that makes the study so important. In the last three centuries it has exhibited flexibility sufficient to allow the progressive fulfillment of aspirations for independence throughout the world, but only at the cost of intermittent war and about a dozen general ones that involved all major powers.
Several basic models have emerged for understanding the world political system, including those of liberal internationalism, which emphasized free trade and capitalism as means of achieving global peace and interdependence; those of radicals and socialists, who pointed to imperialism and the competition for resources as root causes of world conflict; and those of realists, who stress states’ power drives as the basis for all world behavior. Each of these models, however, is an abstraction that reflects a particular point of view and offers only a partial picture.
The more general approach to the study of international politics is constructivist, with scholars attempting to explain how and why the world is as it is. These scholars emphasize the importance of social constructs such as ideas and norms in shaping the structure of world politics. They also recognize that international affairs are essentially a matter of power and the exercise of influence, and they analyze how different kinds of influence work in pursuit of specific goals.