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After Hegemony

Robert O. Keohane

Liberal institutionalism / international relations

The most influential liberal answer to realism, and the founding text of 'neoliberal institutionalism.' Granting the realists' premises — states are self-interested actors in an anarchic world — Keohane argues that they can nonetheless sustain cooperation through international institutions, which lower the costs of agreement, provide information, and build expectations of reciprocity. It explains why cooperation can persist even after the decline of a dominant power.

About the author

American political scientist (b. 1941), professor emeritus at Princeton and one of the most cited scholars of international relations. With Joseph Nye he developed 'complex interdependence'; After Hegemony established neoliberal institutionalism as the principal liberal rival to realism in the study of world politics.

Synopsis

Keohane accepts that the international system is anarchic and its actors rational egoists, then shows, using economic theory, that institutions ('international regimes') can still enable durable cooperation by reducing transaction costs, supplying information, and making reputations matter. Cooperation, he argues, does not require a benevolent hegemon to enforce it; once established, regimes can outlast the power that created them.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Keohane argues that self-interested states can sustain cooperation under anarchy through international institutions, which reduce uncertainty and the costs of agreement — so that order can persist even after a dominant power declines.

By showing that even purely self-interested states have reasons to build and keep institutions, Keohane carved out the major liberal alternative to realism without denying its starting assumptions. It is the theoretical backbone of arguments for international law, trade regimes, and global governance.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with the realism of Waltz and Mearsheimer, who argue institutions merely reflect underlying power and cannot restrain great-power competition, and with critics who say Keohane concedes too much to realism's individualist premises.

Reading note

Rigorous and economics-inflected; the chapters on the functions of international regimes are the core. Read it as the liberal-institutionalist reply to Waltz, and the case for why global cooperation can endure.

Best paired with

Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.

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