A circumspect revival of liberalism: Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye’s Power and Interdependence

Abstract

Classic works in International Relations (IR) can emerge in a variety of ways. Some classics introduce a new paradigm that explains complex phenomena better than previous efforts. Others revive neglected but important ideas and claims. Still others hit the tenor of the times and speak to immediate challenges facing global politics. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye’s Power and Interdependence (PI), first published in 1977, is indeed a classic for all of these reasons.2 Unlike some of the works discussed in this volume, Keohane and Nye’s work was promptly hailed as a classic. Two of the leading IR journals published article-length reviews of PI shortly after its publication. In International Organization, Kal Holsti surmised that this book may ‘prove to be one of the most significant writings in international relations theory of the past two decades’.3In an extensive review published in World Politics, Stanley Michalak referred to PI as ‘a groundbreaking work … that will have a long-term impact on the ways in which teachers and scholars conceptualize international phenomena’.4 Both of these reviewers were prescient. The themes and puzzles presented in PI continue to shape our thinking on globalization, international trade, regime formation and change, non-state actors as well as the nature of power and military force in the global realm. PI was an early collaboration between two young scholars who would both becomeranked among the most influential in the field of IR. When IR scholars were recently asked ‘whose work has had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years’ Robert O. Keohane was ranked first and Joseph S. Nye was ranked sixth.5 Their high standing in the field rests in no small part on the enduring influence of PI and the ways in which it deviated from the standard realist approach. The degree of realist dominance in the decades prior to PI cannot be overstated. In the mid-1950s Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, the subject of Chapter 7 in this volume, was ‘used by more North American university-level instructors than all competing texts in international politics combined’.6 The discipline’s reliance on realist theory was rigorously documented by John Vasquez. Vasquez demonstrated how realist theory informed more than 90 per cent of the hypotheses tested by IR scholars up to the 1970s.7 In this context of realist dominance, Keohane and Nye offered a timely contrast. The events of the 1970s seemed to shake the foundations of political realism. The US inability to prevail in Vietnam despite overwhelming military capabilities was particularly troubling for many political realists. Power, especially military power, was not as fungible as realists had expected. The oil embargo initiated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1972 further highlighted the changing nature of power in the global system by demonstrating how militarily weak states could still wield considerable influence. The global economic crisis brought on by the collapseof the Bretton Woods system showed that even the hegemon was vulnerable in an interdependent world. Finally, the emergence of new issues of global environmental management and questions of global governance of seabed resources raised a new set of problems that realism could not address. Collectively, these real-world events posed serious challenges to the realist paradigm. PI effectively responded to this series of crises that beset world politics in the 1970s. In their Preface to the first edition, Keohane and Nye admit that they ‘soon became uneasy about this one-sided [realist] view of reality, particularly about its inadequate analysis of economic integration and of the roles played by formal and informal international institutions’ (p. v). Keohane and Nye set out to address these inadequacies by clarifying the concept of complex interdependence and to show how complex interdependence contributes to the rise of international regimes in a variety of issue areas. Their case studies examined international monetary affairs and global management of the oceans. They also devoted chapters to the cooperative bilateral relationships between the USA and Canada and the USA and Australia. These cases demonstrate how growing interdependence undermines the efficacy of military power and imposes layers of complexity on global politics that are not acknowledged by realism. I will begin reviewing the central claims and contentions made in PI and how theseclaims challenged mainstream IR in the 1970s. I will then critically explore Keohane and Nye’s later efforts to graft PI onto neorealist theory rather than highlighting how their ideas challenge realist expectations. I argue that this obscures the close relationship between PI and long-standing liberal internationalist themes in IR. I conclude by exploring the significant and enduring legacy of PI in the study of IR.