International relations are highly stratified and dominated by the unequal relationship between the industrialized and developing worlds. Radical, systemic change is necessary in order to achieve security on a global basis---a security understood. International Political Economy. There are three main strands of IPE: Economic Liberalism, Mercantilism and Marxism. Economic Liberalism, following in the tradition of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, stresses the value of a capitalist market economy that operates according to its own laws and, when freely allowed to do so.
Also found in: Dictionary, Acronyms, Wikipedia.See R. Aron, Peace and War (tr. 1967); H. J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (5th ed. rev. 1978); F. S. Northedge and M. J. Grieve, A Hundred Years of International Relations (1971); R. W. Mansbach and J. A. Vasquez, In Search of Theory (1981); F. S. Pearson and J. M. Rochester, International Relations (2d ed. 1988).
The most significant actors in international relations are usually considered to be sovereign NATION STATES. Given that states are sovereign powers, the formal relation between these is one in which there exists no higher authority than the nation states themselves. It is for this reason that WARFARE, or the threat of or the avoidance of warfare, has figured so prominently in both the practice of international relations and as the subject matter of the discipline (see also STRATEGIC THEORY, DETERRENCE THEORY, ARMS RACE). The economic and the political relations between states are also the subject of study, as is the operation of international organizations.
It is in terms of the specificity of its substantive focus, rather than in the range of methods employed, that the discipline of international relations is distinguished from sociology. Thus, most of the approaches, theories and topics of international relations also occur, actually or potentially, as subsections of sociology (see NATION-STATE SYSTEM, WORLD SYSTEM).