es of them happening in the future.
             The authors of our book define International Relations as a relations among states, because they feel that states continue to be the primary actors on the world stage. Also, they feel that various states have historically dominated international politics. Before I was introduced to this class I thought that International Relations simply had to do with the leaders of various countries getting along, such as the United Nations.
             International Relations has two distinctive views that it deals with, and they are Pluralistic or Idealistic and Realistic. Pluralist are the optimistic thinkers. They can visualize the possibility of cooperation and accommodation on a person-to-person level, and that democratic ideas will be soothing to people and states. Also they tend to think that political leaders will learn from past mistakes, or errors in judgment, and use them to shape the future. Realist tend to be more pessimistic thinkers, who view international relations as "the same old thing". They see the world as constant conflict and competition, which is threatened with instability and threats to peace. They basically deal with the "right here" and "right now".
             Foreign policy tends to differ from international relations, because it takes relations to the level of policy making. It goes above and beyond the democratic point of view. In the development of foreign policy, there can be many types of government involved. Therefore, if a policy is to be made, each government has to come to a consensus which does not necessarily mean that one government's ideas are better than the others. The countries involved are
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