Robert Owen Keohane

1. Introduction

Robert Owen Keohane (b. 1941) is widely regarded as one of the most influential theorists of international relations in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His work is most closely associated with neoliberal institutionalism, a research program that accepts core realist assumptions about anarchy and state rationality while arguing that international institutions significantly shape patterns of cooperation and conflict.

Keohane’s central question concerns how rule-governed order is possible in a world without a global sovereign. In works such as After Hegemony and, with Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, he contends that international regimes—understood as sets of principles, norms, rules, and decision procedures—can emerge and persist even when no single hegemon dominates the system. These institutions, he argues, reduce uncertainty, structure incentives, and embed power in rules, thereby enabling cooperation among self-interested actors.

For scholars in political philosophy and related fields, Keohane’s analyses offer an empirically grounded account of order without world government, complementing and challenging more ideal-theoretical treatments of global justice, cosmopolitanism, and democratic legitimacy beyond the state. His later work explicitly addresses the legitimacy and accountability of global governance arrangements, asking under what conditions international organizations may claim a “right to rule.”

Methodologically, Keohane advocates evidence-sensitive, problem-driven theory. He has played a key role in promoting rigorous standards of inference in qualitative research, influencing how normative theorists think about feasibility and institutional design. Across his career, he has helped redefine debates about power, sovereignty, and authority in an increasingly interdependent world.

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“The problem for theory, therefore, is to explain how cooperation can occur in the absence of a hegemonic leader.”

— Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony

2. Life and Historical Context

Keohane’s life and career unfolded alongside major transformations in global politics and in the academic study of international relations, which strongly shaped the questions he pursued.

Born in Chicago in 1941, he came of age during the early Cold War, when classical realism—with its emphasis on power politics and interstate rivalry—dominated U.S. foreign policy thinking and academic IR. His undergraduate education at Shimer College (1961), with its Great Books curriculum, exposed him to canonical works in political philosophy, encouraging close textual analysis and engagement with questions of authority, justice, and order. Doctoral studies at Harvard (PhD 1966) placed him within mainstream American political science at a time when behavioralism and formal theory were gaining prominence.

The broader historical context of his early career included the Vietnam War, détente, decolonization, and the expansion of international economic institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and GATT. Many analysts viewed world politics primarily through the lens of superpower rivalry, yet growing economic interdependence and the rise of international organizations raised new questions about non-military forms of power and cooperation.

Keohane’s key works of the 1970s and 1980s emerged against this backdrop, and also against intellectual debates over hegemonic stability theory, which claimed that open international economic orders depend on a dominant state. The relative decline of U.S. economic primacy in the 1970s posed the puzzle of how cooperation might persist “after hegemony,” directly informing the arguments of his 1984 book.

In the 1990s and 2000s, globalization, regional integration (notably the European Union), and the proliferation of non-state actors led Keohane to broaden his focus from regimes to global governance. Post–Cold War unipolarity, humanitarian interventions, and later the rise of new powers (such as China) provided the empirical backdrop for his reflections on legitimacy, multilateralism, and the changing distribution of authority in world politics.

3. Intellectual Development

Keohane’s intellectual trajectory is often described in phases, each shaped by evolving empirical concerns and theoretical debates.

From realist training to regime theory

Initially trained in a realist environment, Keohane shared realism’s focus on anarchy, power, and strategic interaction. However, experiences in the late 1960s and 1970s—such as the growing role of international organizations and the complexity of economic relations—led him to probe the limits of purely power-political explanations. Collaborating with Joseph Nye, he developed the notion of complex interdependence, emphasizing multiple channels of contact, issue-specific politics, and the reduced centrality of military force in some domains.

Consolidation of neoliberal institutionalism

During the early 1980s, Keohane systematized these insights into what came to be known as neoliberal institutionalism. In After Hegemony and related essays, he used game theory and rational-choice reasoning to argue that states may rationally construct and maintain international regimes. He framed this as a response to hegemonic stability theory and as an engagement with economists’ models of cooperation under uncertainty.

Expansion to global governance and normativity

From the 1990s onwards, Keohane extended his focus beyond individual regimes to the broader landscape of global governance—a partially globalized order characterized by overlapping institutions, networks, and private actors. He increasingly engaged with normative theorists, reflecting on legitimacy, accountability, and democracy in this dispersed system of authority.

Reflexive reassessment

In the 2000s and 2010s, against the backdrop of financial crises, climate change, and populist backlash against multilateralism, Keohane reconsidered the scope and limits of his earlier institutionalist optimism. He engaged with constructivist, feminist, and critical approaches, acknowledging the ways in which institutions may entrench inequality and domination, and exploring conditions under which institutional authority could be considered morally and politically acceptable.

4. Major Works and Key Texts

Keohane’s corpus spans theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions. Several works are especially central to understanding his thought.

Core monographs and collections

Methodological contribution

Selected essays on legitimacy and democracy

Several widely cited essays, often co-authored, develop Keohane’s thinking about legitimacy, accountability, and global democracy (e.g., “Global Governance and Democratic Accountability”; “The Contingent Legitimacy of Multilateralism”; work on the “club model” of multilateral cooperation). These texts articulate criteria for evaluating international institutions and analyze tensions between effectiveness, inclusiveness, and democratic control.

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“Regimes can be defined as principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given issue-area.”

— Robert O. Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes”

5. Core Ideas: Regimes, Power, and Interdependence

Keohane’s core theoretical contributions revolve around three interrelated concepts: international regimes, power, and complex interdependence.

International regimes

For Keohane, international regimes are more than formal organizations; they are:

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“Principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given issue-area.”

He argues that regimes reduce transaction costs, provide information, and create focal points that enable cooperation under anarchy. They help states overcome problems of collective action, enforcement, and uncertainty, particularly in areas like trade, finance, and the environment. Proponents see this as explaining why cooperation can persist even when hegemonic power declines.

A relational and institutional view of power

In Power and Interdependence and later essays, Keohane, often with Nye, distinguishes among:

He emphasizes that institutions do not replace power; they channel and constitute it. Control over agenda-setting, voting rules, and information flows within institutions becomes a key dimension of influence.

Complex interdependence

The concept of complex interdependence challenges images of world politics dominated solely by military rivalry. Keohane and Nye highlight:

• Multiple channels linking societies (not just state-to-state)
• The absence of a clear hierarchy of issues (economic and environmental issues can rival security)
• The reduced role of military force in certain relationships

Under these conditions, vulnerability and sensitivity to others’ actions become critical resources. Power is thus context-dependent, and states often seek mutual gains through institutions rather than zero-sum domination. This framework underpins Keohane’s later analyses of global governance and institutional design.

6. Neoliberal Institutionalism and Its Philosophical Implications

Neoliberal institutionalism—with Keohane as its most prominent architect—seeks to explain how cooperation is possible under anarchy while retaining many realist assumptions. It has also been a major reference point for political philosophers examining global order.

Core claims of neoliberal institutionalism

Keohane’s version of neoliberal institutionalism rests on several propositions:

By employing game-theoretic models (e.g., iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas, coordination games), Keohane argues that states can rationally design institutions that encourage reciprocity, reduce uncertainty, and make defection less attractive.

Philosophical resonances

For political philosophers, neoliberal institutionalism speaks directly to classic questions:

• Order without a sovereign: Keohane’s account offers a non-utopian, empirically grounded analogue to Hobbesian and Kantian discussions of how stable cooperation can arise without a world state.
• Institutional feasibility: His emphasis on transaction costs, information, and incentives provides a framework for assessing which institutional designs are feasible under non-ideal conditions—relevant for theories of global justice and institutional ethics.
• Power and normativity: By showing how power is embedded in institutional rules, his work intersects with philosophical debates on structural power and domination, even though he does not adopt a critical-theory vocabulary.

Philosophers sympathetic to cosmopolitanism have drawn on Keohane to argue that partial, issue-specific institutions can advance justice without a comprehensive world state. Critics, however, contend that neoliberal institutionalism underestimates deep inequalities, identity-based conflict, and normative disagreement, issues that constructivist and critical perspectives seek to foreground.

7. Global Governance, Legitimacy, and Democracy Beyond the State

From the late 1990s onward, Keohane focused increasingly on global governance: the ensemble of overlapping institutions, regimes, and networks that regulate transnational issues. He characterizes this landscape as “partially globalized,” emphasizing that authority is dispersed and issue-specific rather than fully centralized.

Global governance as dispersed authority

Keohane analyzes how states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private actors together exercise de facto authority over individuals and states. Rather than a unified global government, he describes a patchwork of:

• Formal organizations (e.g., WTO, IMF, UN bodies)
• Informal clubs and networks (e.g., G20, regulatory networks)
• Public–private partnerships and standard-setting bodies

This configuration raises questions about who governs, by what rules, and in whose interests.

Legitimacy in global institutions

Keohane distinguishes legitimacy from mere legality or effectiveness. Legitimacy, for him, involves a justified belief that an institution has a right to rule. He proposes criteria such as:

He argues that legitimacy is often contingent, varying with performance and changing expectations.

Democracy beyond the state

Keohane is cautious about the prospects for full global democracy, suggesting that democracy at this level is likely to be indirect and partial. His work explores:

• The “double accountability” problem: international institutions must be accountable both to member governments and to affected populations.
• The “club model” of multilateralism: small groups of powerful states or actors take the lead in cooperation, which may enhance effectiveness but raise concerns about exclusion and equity.
• Possible avenues for democratizing global governance, such as greater transparency, parliamentary oversight at the national level, and enhanced roles for transnational civil society.

Philosophers have engaged these ideas in debates over cosmopolitan democracy, republicanism beyond borders, and the moral status of non-democratic but effective global institutions.

8. Methodology and Evidence in Political and Moral Theory

Keohane has been a prominent advocate of rigorous, evidence-based methodology in political science, with implications for how normative political theory relates to empirical work.

Scientific inference and research design

In Designing Social Inquiry (with King and Verba), Keohane argues that qualitative and quantitative research should adhere to common standards of scientific inference. Key principles include:

While this book sparked extensive debate, it has influenced how many scholars—empirical and normative—think about connecting theoretical claims to evidence.

Methodological institutionalism

Keohane’s broader approach, sometimes described as methodological institutionalism, treats institutions as central explanatory variables and emphasizes mid-level, problem-driven theories rather than grand, all-encompassing paradigms. He often combines:

• Rational-choice reasoning about strategic interaction
• Empirical case studies
• Sensitivity to historical and contextual factors

This orientation encourages political theorists to consider feasibility constraints, incentive structures, and institutional path dependencies when formulating normative proposals.

Implications for moral and political philosophy

Keohane has argued that evaluating global institutions requires both normative criteria and empirically grounded judgments about what arrangements are possible under current conditions. Philosophers interested in non-ideal theory and “realistic utopias” have drawn on his work to:

• Anchor ideals of justice and democracy in concrete analyses of existing institutions
• Assess incremental reforms in terms of their likely effects on cooperation and power relations
• Reflect on how evidence about institutional performance should shape moral evaluation

Critics from interpretivist and critical traditions question whether Keohane’s conception of “science” adequately captures the role of meaning, identity, and structural domination, but even these critics often engage his methodological arguments as a significant point of reference.

9. Critiques, Revisions, and Ongoing Debates

Keohane’s work has generated extensive debate across international relations and political theory. Critiques come from multiple directions, and Keohane has at times incorporated or responded to them.

Realist critiques

Realist scholars argue that Keohane’s emphasis on institutions overstates their autonomy from underlying power distributions. They contend that:

• Institutions largely reflect the interests of powerful states.
• Cooperation is fragile and contingent on hegemonic support.
• Concerns about relative gains limit the depth of institutionalized cooperation.

In response, Keohane acknowledges the centrality of power, but maintains that institutions can modify behavior and outcomes even when created by powerful states.

Constructivist and sociological critiques

Constructivists and sociological institutionalists argue that Keohane’s rationalist framework underestimates the role of norms, identities, and socialization. They claim that:

• Institutions do more than reduce transaction costs; they shape actors’ preferences and identities.
• Legitimacy and obligation cannot be fully captured by strategic reasoning.

Keohane has engaged constructivist insights, for instance by recognizing social legitimacy and normative expectations as important for institutional stability, while retaining a rationalist core.

Critical, feminist, and postcolonial critiques

Critical theorists, feminists, and postcolonial scholars contend that neoliberal institutionalism and some of Keohane’s work:

• Underplay structural inequalities, including gendered and colonial legacies.
• Treat states as unitary and overlook marginalized voices.
• Risk legitimizing institutions that perpetuate domination under the guise of cooperation.

Keohane has increasingly acknowledged these concerns, especially regarding the distributional consequences of institutions and the need to consider the perspectives of the least advantaged when assessing legitimacy.

Debates on global democracy and legitimacy

Philosophers and IR theorists debate Keohane’s cautious stance on global democracy. Some cosmopolitans argue that his criteria for legitimacy are too deferential to existing power structures and under-ambitious democratically. Others see his focus on partial, indirect, and incremental reforms as a realistic appraisal of current constraints.

These ongoing debates—over rationalism vs. constructivism, power vs. norms, and effectiveness vs. democracy—continue to structure discussions of global governance in which Keohane’s work is a central reference point, even for those who fundamentally disagree with his assumptions.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Keohane’s legacy lies in reshaping both the study of international relations and interdisciplinary debates about global order.

Influence within international relations

Within IR, he is widely associated with:

• Establishing neoliberal institutionalism as a major research program alongside realism and constructivism.
• Making regime theory central to empirical and theoretical work on international cooperation.
• Promoting higher methodological standards through his work on research design.

Generations of scholars have built on or reacted against his frameworks, whether by refining rationalist models, advancing constructivist alternatives, or developing critical perspectives on institutions and power.

Cross-disciplinary impact

Beyond IR, Keohane has significantly influenced:

Historical positioning

Historically, Keohane is often seen as a key figure in the post–Cold War reorientation of IR, moving beyond purely state-centric and military-focused analyses toward a richer account of institutions, networks, and governance. His writings on hegemonic decline, multilateralism, and global governance have been invoked in debates over U.S. leadership, European integration, rising powers, and the future of multilateral order.

While assessments differ on whether his approach adequately grapples with deep structural injustices or transformative possibilities, there is wide agreement that his concepts—complex interdependence, international regimes, and institutionalized power—have become part of the standard vocabulary for thinking about world politics. His work continues to serve as a touchstone for scholars seeking to connect empirical analysis of international institutions with normative questions about authority, justice, and democracy beyond the state.