Robert Keohane

Robert Owen Keohane (/ˌkiːoʊˈhɑːn/; born October 3, 1941) is an American academic, who, following the publication of his influential book After Hegemony (1984), became widely associated with the theory of neoliberal institutionalism, as well as transnational relations and world politics in international relations in the 1970s. He is currently a Professor of Political Science at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton 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.

Early life

Keohane was born at the University of Chicago Hospitals. His education through the fifth grade was at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When he was 10, the family moved to Mount Carroll, Illinois, where he attended public school and his parents taught at Shimer College. After the 10th grade, Keohane enrolled at Shimer through the school's early entrance program, which since 1950 has allowed selected high school students to enter college before completing high school. When later asked to compare his undergraduate education as an early entrant at Shimer with his graduate work at Harvard, Keohane remarked "it is not clear to me that I have ever been with a brighter set of people than those early entrants." Keohane currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Shimer College.

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.

Career

Keohane has taught at Swarthmore, Stanford, Brandeis, Harvard, and Duke. At Harvard he was Stanfield Professor of International Peace, and at Duke he was the James B. Duke Professor of Political Science.

He is the author of many works, including After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton University Press, 1984), for which he was awarded the second annual University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in 1989 for "Ideas Improving World Order".

Between 1974 and 1980 he was editor of the journal International Organization. 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. 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.

Keohane is married to Nannerl O. Keohane, former president of Duke University and Wellesley College and herself a noted political scientist. They have four grown children: Sarah, Stephan, Jonathan, and Nathaniel.

Books

• Transnational Relations and World Politics, co-authored with Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 1972)
• After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton University Press, 1984)
• Neorealism and Its Critics (Columbia University Press, 1986)
• International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Westview, 1989)
• Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Little, Brown, 1977); with Nye
• Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, 1994); with Gary King and Sidney Verba
• Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (Routledge, New York, 2002)
• Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge University Press, 2003); with J. L. Holzgrefe
• The Regime Complex for Climate Change with David G. Victor (2010)