What is an IR degree, as opposed to a politics degree?
Broadly, at the risk of stating the painfully obvious, IR tends to deal with interstate relations and how these are structured and mediated; whereas political science degrees are more concerned with the political behaviour and systems within the state. The dividing line between individual modules are very rarely this precise, and indeed you can happily combine the two. As a general rule however, a degree programme in IR will be more internationalist and historical, whereas a degree programme in politics will have a greater compulsory element of applied political analysis. This is not always standard, with many parts of IR (and IPE) closely resembling economics in its use of applied modelling and game theory (largely influenced by the quantitative-focussed US political science schools). For more information on the two disciplines, the wikipedia pages are here (IR) and here (political science).
