The term ' International Relations ", in the words of Heart man covers, "All intercourse, among states and movements of people, goods and ideas across national frontiers. However as a field of study its focus is on the processes by which states adjust their national interests to those of other states."

Stanley Hoffmann is of the opinion that "The discipline of international relations is concerned with the factors and activities which affect the external policies and the power of the basic units into which the world is divided." Some other writers give the more broader definitions of international relations by equating the term international affairs. For example Teygve Mathiesen says that international relations embraces” All kinds of relations traversing state boundaries, no matter whether they are of an economic, legal, political are any other character, whether they be private or official, and "All human behaviors originating on one side of a state boundary and affecting human behaviors on the other side of the boundary".