Robert Owen Keohane (born October 3, 1941) is an American political scientist working in the fields of
international relations
International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...
and
international political economy. Following the publication of his influential book ''
After Hegemony'' (1984), he has become widely associated with the theory of
neoliberal institutionalism in international relations, as well as transnational relations and
world politics in
international relations
International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...
in the 1970s.
He is Professor Emeritus of
International Affairs at the
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and has also taught at
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...
,
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
and
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
. A 2011 survey of International Relations scholars placed Keohane second in terms of influence and quality of scholarship in the last twenty years. According to the
Open Syllabus Project, Keohane is the most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.
Early life and education
Keohane was born at the
University of Chicago Hospitals. His education through the fifth grade was at the
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When he was 10, the family moved to
Mount Carroll, Illinois, where he attended public school and his parents taught at
Shimer College
Shimer Great Books School ( ) is a Classic_book#University_programs, Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, or ...
. After the 10th grade, Keohane enrolled at Shimer through the school's early entrance program, which since 1950 has allowed selected high school students to enter college before completing high school.
When later asked to compare his undergraduate education as an early entrant at Shimer with his graduate work at Harvard, Keohane remarked "it is not clear to me that I have ever been with a brighter set of people than those early entrants."
Keohane currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Shimer College.
He earned a BA, with honors, from
Shimer College
Shimer Great Books School ( ) is a Classic_book#University_programs, Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, or ...
in 1961.
He obtained his PhD from
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
in 1966, one year after he joined the faculty of
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...
.
He was the student of Harvard University Professor
Stanley Hoffmann. He described
Judith Shklar as his strongest intellectual mentor during his graduate studies.
He has also described
Kenneth Waltz
Kenneth Neal Waltz (; June 8, 1924 – May 12, 2013) was an American political scientist who was a member of the faculty at both the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University and one of the most prominent scholars in the field ...
and
Karl Polanyi as influences.
Career
Keohane has taught at
Swarthmore,
Stanford,
Brandeis,
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
, and
Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of Royal family, royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobi ...
. At Harvard he was Stanfield Professor of International Peace, and at Duke he was the
James B. Duke Professor of Political Science.
He is the author of many works, including
''After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy'' (Princeton University Press, 1984), for which he was awarded the second annual
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public university, public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19t ...
Grawemeyer Award in 1989 for "Ideas Improving World Order".
Keohane describes the process of forming the theoretical insights of ''After Hegemony'' as follows during the late 1970s,
Keohane has been characterized as a key figure in the development of a discipline of
International Political Economy in the United States.
Along with
Joseph Nye, Keohane coined the concept of
complex interdependence to capture the ways in which power had been fragmented and diffused in economic affairs.
Robert Keohane coined the term
Hegemonic stability theory in a 1980 article for the notion that the international system is more likely to remain stable when a single
nation-state is the dominant world power, or
hegemon.
Keohane's 1984 book ''
After Hegemony'' used insights from the
new institutional economics to argue that the international system could remain stable in the absence of a hegemon, thus rebutting hegemonic stability theory.
Keohane showed that international cooperation could be sustained through repeated interactions, transparency, and monitoring.
Keohane played an important role in steering the focus of the journal ''
International Organization
An international organization, also known as an intergovernmental organization or an international institution, is an organization that is established by a treaty or other type of instrument governed by international law and possesses its own le ...
'' from scholarship focused on international organizations to a general IR journal; it is now the leading journal in the field of IR.
He joined the journal in 1968.
Between 1974 and 1980, he was editor of the journal.
He has been president of the
International Studies Association, 1988–1989, and of the
American Political Science Association, 1999–2000.
Keohane is a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
, the
American Academy of Political and Social Science and has held a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
and fellowships at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research institution at Stanford University designed to advance the frontiers of knowledge about human behavior and society, and contribute to the resoluti ...
and the
National Humanities Center. He was awarded the
Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2005, and elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
that same year. In 2007, he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
. He was listed as the most influential scholar of international relations in a 2005 ''
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...
'' poll.
Political scientists he has taught include
Lisa Martin,
Andrew Moravcsik,
Layna Mosley,
Beth Simmons, Ronald Mitchell, and
Helen V. Milner. Other students include
Fareed Zakaria.
In 2012, Keohane received the
Harvard Centennial Medal.
In fall 2013 he is the Allianz Distinguished Visitor at the
American Academy in Berlin.
In 2014, he was awarded the James Madison Award of the American Political Science Association.
He was awarded the 2016
Balzan Prize for International Relations: History and Theory.
Personal life
While he was an assistant professor at Swarthmore College, he was an activist against the Vietnam War, and also campaigned for 1968 presidential candidate
Eugene McCarthy. Keohane is married to
Nannerl O. Keohane, former president of
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
and
Wellesley College and herself a noted political scientist.
[Sharon Walsh and Jeffrey Brainard, 'Duke's Ex-President and Her Husband Head to Princeton; Penn's Medical School Denies Tenure to 2 Bioethicists', in '' The Chronicle of Higher Education'', October 29, 200]
/ref> They have four grown children: Sarah, Stephan, Jonathan, and Nat Keohane, Nathaniel.
Books
* ''Transnational Relations and World Politics'', co-authored with Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou.
The pres ...
, 1972)
* ''Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition'' (Little, Brown, 1977); with Joseph Nye
* '' After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy'' (Princeton University Press, 1984)
* ''Neorealism and Its Critics'' (Columbia University Press, 1986)
* ''International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory'' (Westview, 1989)
* '' Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research'' (Princeton, 1994); with Gary King and Sidney Verba
* ''Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World'' (Routledge
Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...
, New York, 2002)
* ''Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas'' (Cambridge University Press, 2003); with J. L. Holzgrefe
* ''The Regime Complex for Climate Change'' with David G. Victor (2010)
References
External links
Robert Keohane's Faculty Profile at Princeton
*
Robert O. Keohane as the Allianz Distinguished Visitor
at the American Academy in Berlin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Keohane, Robert
1941 births
Living people
American political scientists
American male writers
Brandeis University faculty
Duke University faculty
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
American international relations scholars
People from Mount Carroll, Illinois
Political liberals (international relations)
Princeton University faculty
Shimer College alumni
Stanford University Department of Political Science faculty
Swarthmore College faculty
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools alumni
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Corresponding fellows of the British Academy
Presidents of the International Studies Association
Members of the American Philosophical Society