Power and international relations: an essay on a controversial concept

Power is not a new idea in international relations. More and more often disputed, contested or spoiled, Power earns a permanent changeable role and lends itself to a multitude of theories and interpretations constantly renewed. This essay has vocation to reveal both facets of power. The first aspect concerns the essence of power, that is its genealogy through the various definition attempts which outline the theory of International Relations since Thucydide, but also its nature and its deep characteristics. The second angle refers to the power's existence with its numerous means of expressions and the results of its distribution on the structuring of the international system. Defiant and refractory to a general Theory, power remains as the favorite tool of conceptualization, rationalization and analysis of International Relations.  Archetypal regulating principle in a complex world, fed by paradoxes, designer of meanings and perceptions, maintaining an ambivalent connection with international law, visible and invisible,  power is not in itself and for one, but an operational concept which is at first what we make of it. Finally, power is this non-exhausted and inexhaustible object which is opening the Pandora's box of International Relations.