The enquiry should begin by asking how states combine to produce a situation in international relations that we would term international order? Obviously, at one level, this is primarily a descriptive task. It involves looking at the history of international relations and discovering how international order has been created. This will be done in the latter half of the book. Equally obviously, this can only provide a partial answer, because it is necessary first of all to arrive at some conception of what is meant by international order. Moreover, such a conception is almost inevitably going to be a prescriptive one embodying certain value preferences, for the simple reason that order itself is not normatively neutral: it carries with it certain connotations and these may not be acceptable to all people. What is order for the policeman may not be order for the anarchist. What is order for the bourgeoisie may not be order for a revolutionary proletariat. What is order for the Great Powers may not be order for the small. What is order for the satisfied states may well not be order for the dissatisfied. Order, in other words, is normally a set of particular, masquerading as a set of general, preferences.

The book will be concerned with certain mechanisms devised, and certain norms of behaviour developed, in an effort to manage the relations between states.