The terms are often used interchangeably. Some modern students particularly behviouralists hold that there ought to be a distinction in the usage. That the failure of practitioners of international relations and diplomacy differentiate them has led to a semantic problem in the study of international affairs today.
These students argue that international politics should deal with the politics of international community in a rather narrow sense, focusing on diplomacy and the relations among states and other political units whereas internatial relations (as a matter of semantics) should be
transitional , that is, operating in or between many different countries without being board in a particular one. International relations is properly embracing the totality of relations among people and groups in the world.
Most scholars agree that the term international politics is used primarily to describe official politic relations between governments acting on behalf of their states. But international relations is broader and cannot be limited.
Stanley Hoffmann has argued that international relations is concerned with the “actions and activities which affect the external policies and the power of the basic units into which the world is divided”. They include transitional relationship, political , non-political, official and unofficial, formal and informal.
Other scholars also argue that international politics is synonymous with international affairs and it embraces all kinds of relations among states- economic, political, legal, etc. whether private, public or official /unofficial. Therefore, international relations for international politics has the tendency to exclude the non-political aspects of relationship among nations.
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