The analysis of FPA may be about a single decision taken in a certain case as well as about the foreign policy of a state or the general patterns of foreign policy actions of a group of states that can be categorised together. Scholars of IR are interested in interactions between two or more states, and particularly in why some of these interactions are cooperative while others are competitive and may even lead to war, whereas foreign policy analysts want to understand why a given country’s government has decided to take certain actions toward foreign governments or foreign non-state actors, why a government has decided that specific foreign policy interests are important to it, and why it has crafted a particular strategy to promote or defend those interests. What separates the study area of two disciplines is that while IR mainly focuses on the international system and the relations among states, FPA focuses on how these relations are formulated and conducted. In another aspect, IR focuses on the outcomes whereas FPA focuses on the processes.