Robert O. Keohane Analysis
Robert O. Keohane
1. Robert Keohane’s leaning towards a normative viewpoint of world politics can be interpreted even before his formal academic education and latter academic teachings and successes. With a father part of the social sciences faculty of the famous University of Chicago and mother deeply engaged with social justice and peace, it would have been no stretch to assume Keohane’s values and world view from an early age would fall within liberal boundaries. Indeed in analysing Keohane’s understanding of the international system, and his view that ‘we study world politics not because it is easily amenable to scientific investigation, but because human welfare, the fate of our species, and the future of the fragile global ecology itself …show more content…
Recognizing the existence of an anarchic society of states but also an importance for reaching collective goals is one of the key tenets of neoliberal institutionalism. However, there have been certain historical events vital to the existence of current institutions that have encouraged rational interdependence. Increased modernization and the ability to share technological advances has created networks of reciprocal benefit, thus relationships that an actor cannot afford to end. According to neoliberal Institutionalist, another important development in the post-war international system would be that of hegemonic stability theory, and also the decline and the affects of the decline of the United States as a hegemonic power. As outlined in Keohane’s After Hegemony. Immediately after the Second World War, one of the most important systems analyzed was that of the ‘capitalist economic and free trade system, which was supported by a series of formal institutions, such as the IMF, which came to be known as the Bretton Woods system. These institutions were backed by American economic resources, and in doing so the USA was behaving as a hegemon. Neoliberal Institutionalist may recognize self-interest in these actions (which would be one of the main focuses of structural realists), but the wider acknowledgement is that such agreements create opportunity for interdependence. Conversely, hegemonic stability theory has become less suited to describing cooperation with regards to the declining hegemonic influence of the United States. As stated in After Hegemony, in relation to economic troubles facing the oil markets of the 1970s, ‘the prospect of discord creates incentives for cooperation; and at least in money and trade, international regimes have been sufficiently well developed to facilitate a good deal of cooperation – certainly more than would have been predicted by the theory of hegemonic stability alone’ (Keohane). This theory allows me to illustrate Keohane’s
1. Robert Keohane’s leaning towards a normative viewpoint of world politics can be interpreted even before his formal academic education and latter academic teachings and successes. With a father part of the social sciences faculty of the famous University of Chicago and mother deeply engaged with social justice and peace, it would have been no stretch to assume Keohane’s values and world view from an early age would fall within liberal boundaries. Indeed in analysing Keohane’s understanding of the international system, and his view that ‘we study world politics not because it is easily amenable to scientific investigation, but because human welfare, the fate of our species, and the future of the fragile global ecology itself …show more content…
Recognizing the existence of an anarchic society of states but also an importance for reaching collective goals is one of the key tenets of neoliberal institutionalism. However, there have been certain historical events vital to the existence of current institutions that have encouraged rational interdependence. Increased modernization and the ability to share technological advances has created networks of reciprocal benefit, thus relationships that an actor cannot afford to end. According to neoliberal Institutionalist, another important development in the post-war international system would be that of hegemonic stability theory, and also the decline and the affects of the decline of the United States as a hegemonic power. As outlined in Keohane’s After Hegemony. Immediately after the Second World War, one of the most important systems analyzed was that of the ‘capitalist economic and free trade system, which was supported by a series of formal institutions, such as the IMF, which came to be known as the Bretton Woods system. These institutions were backed by American economic resources, and in doing so the USA was behaving as a hegemon. Neoliberal Institutionalist may recognize self-interest in these actions (which would be one of the main focuses of structural realists), but the wider acknowledgement is that such agreements create opportunity for interdependence. Conversely, hegemonic stability theory has become less suited to describing cooperation with regards to the declining hegemonic influence of the United States. As stated in After Hegemony, in relation to economic troubles facing the oil markets of the 1970s, ‘the prospect of discord creates incentives for cooperation; and at least in money and trade, international regimes have been sufficiently well developed to facilitate a good deal of cooperation – certainly more than would have been predicted by the theory of hegemonic stability alone’ (Keohane). This theory allows me to illustrate Keohane’s