Robert O. Keohane

Professor of International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton University

Robert O. Keohane is currently Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University, after holding teaching and research posts at Duke University, Swarthmore College and Stanford, Brandeis and Harvard universities.

In the 1970s Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye developed the school of thought they dubbed “complex interdependence”, advocating “soft power” and the recourse to cooperation in place of conflict. Keohane has since redefined the concept of power and currently focuses his studies on the characteristics of the information society and on analysis of the transnational issues arising in a world of networks. He is regarded today as one of the most influential scholars in the field of international affairs.

Robert O. Keohane is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984), for which he received the Grawemeyer Award in 1989, and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002). He is co-author with Joseph S. Nye, Jr. of Power and Interdependence (third edition 2001) and, with Gary King and Sidney Verba, of Designing Social Inquiry (1994).

Robert O. Keohane has served as president of the International Studies Association (1988-89) and the American Political Science Association (1999-2000). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. In April 2005 he received the prestigious Johan Skytte Foundation Prize “for his significant contribution to our understanding of world politics in an era of interdependence, globalization and terrorism”.