What is the difference between International Relations and International Studies major?

In academic approaches to international relations, what are the basic differences between the disciplines of security studies and strategic studies?

• Does security studies has a broader coverage as it is said by some?

• Answer:

  In thinking about the concept of security, the strategic studies were dominating the scholarly discourse during the Cold War, and can be equated to the "study of the threat, use, and control of military force" (Walt 1991). On the other hand, a new, post-Cold War agenda in Security Studies has concentrated on deepening and broadening of the field, and is concentrating on multiple actors, levels and sectors that have not been treated by the traditionalists. The most systematic portrayal of such approach is the work of Barry Buzan and the so-called Copenhagen School (see Buzan 1991, Buzan et al. 1998, Buzan and Waever 2003). Buzan suggested that military security is rather a subset of security studies and that strategic studies should be referred to as such. However, more recently there has been a revival of interest in Strategic Studies, for there have been concerns that this broadening and deepening of the present subject of Security Studies can make the concept loosing its analytic edge (some arguments in Betts 1997). Thus, it could be justified that strategic studies at present stage can have their subdisciplinary autonomy within broader Security Studies. However, the discourse of security has been changing in the past couple of decades, and the heyday of Strategic Studies as a synonym for the study of security is over.