ABSTRACT
This chapter determines what constitutes the distinctive nature of international or interstate relations. Hans Morgenthau is a traditionalist and Kenneth Boulding a modernist, yet both begin with general concepts not unique to international relations: power and conflict. International power politics or international conflicts are treated as species belonging to a genus, as illustrations or special cases of universally human phenomena. The chapter discusses that international society is characterized by "the absence of an entity that holds a monopoly of legitimate violence". The purpose of the empirical study of international relations consists precisely in determining the historical perceptions that control the behavior of collective actors and the decisions of the rulers of these actors. Every concrete study of international relations is a sociological and historical study since the calculation of forces refers to number, space, resources, and regimes, and these elements in turn constitute the stakes involved in conflicts between states.
