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Robert Owen Keohane (born October 3, 1941) is an American political scientist working in the fields of international relations 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 Global politics in international relations 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, Duke University, Harvard University and Stanford University. 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.
He earned a BA, with honors, from Shimer College in 1961. He obtained his PhD from Harvard in 1966, one year after he joined the faculty of Swarthmore College. 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 and Karl Polanyi as influences.
He is the author of many works, including (Princeton University Press, 1984), for which he was awarded the second annual University of Louisville 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 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 Political and Social Science and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 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 that same year. In 2007, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He was listed as the most influential scholar of international relations in a 2005 Foreign Policy 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.
He received the Quantrell Award.
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