Power and interdependence revisited

International organization

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 1987, Pages 725-753

  Keohane, Robert O ^a   Nye, Joseph S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84974065411     PISSN: 00208183     EISSN: 15315088     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020818300027661     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.
2. Raymond Vernon, always a pioneer, exemplified this evaluative process by looking back at his important book, Sovereignty at Bay, ten years after its publication; he responded to criticisms and added his own. See Vernon, “Sovereignty at Bay Ten Years After,” International Organization 35 (Summer 1981), pp. 517–30. In a recent special issue of International Studies Notes 12 (Spring 1986), James N. Rosenau, Kenneth E. Boulding, John H. Herz, William T. R. Fox, and Robert C. North also reflected on their work.
3. Stanley J. Michalak, “Theoretical Perspectives for Understanding International Interdependence,” World Politics 32 (October 1979), p. 150.
4. Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974), p. 186.
5. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).
6. Albert Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945).
7. In Charles Kindleberger, ed., The International Corporation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970).
8. For a recent analysis that makes this point well, using somewhat different terms, see K. J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Winchester, Mass.: Allen & Unwin, 1985).
9. K. J. Holsti, “A New International Politics?” International Organization 32 (Spring 1978), p. 525; Michalak, “Theoretical Perspectives,” p. 148. For a mea culpa and a systematic attempt to articulate realist and neorealist assumptions, see Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Ada Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), pp. 503–40, reprinted in Robert O. Keohane, Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 158–203. Keohane's later volume, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), explicitly seeks to build a theory of institutions, with what could be considered liberal implications, on premises that are consistent with those of political realism.
10. For our account of the connections between integration theory and theories of interdependence, see our article, “International Interdependence and Integration,” in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby, eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 8 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 363–414. Karl Deutsch's work on regional integration was equally important to the field as Haas's; although we discuss both in our 1975 article, our own analysis owes a greater debt to Haas's neofunctionalism.
11. In contrast to this position, Holsti asserts that interdependence does not have a problem focus: “The fact of interdependence,” he says, “has to lead to a problem before it warrants serious attention, just as concern with war, peace, order and power led to our field centuries ago.” (Holsti, The Dividing Discipline, p. 47).
12. David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power: A Conceptual Analysis,” International Organization 34 (Fall 1980), pp. 471–596.
13. Robert J. Art, To What Ends Military Power?” International Security 4 (Spring 1980), pp. 16–17. Prof. Art should be commended, however, for forthrightly acknowledging in print that he had misinterpreted our views. International Security 4 (Fall 1980), p. 189.
14. J. Martin Rochester, “The Rise and Fall of International Organization as a Field of Study,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), note 52, p. 792. A similar mistake occurs in Ray Maghroori and Bennett Ramberg, eds., Globalism Versus Realism: International Relations Third Debate (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982).
15. John Gerard Ruggie, “International Responses to Technology: Concepts and Trends,” International Organization 29 (Summer 1975), p. 569; see also Richard N. Cooper, “Prolegomena to the Choice of an International Monetary System,” International Organization 29 (Winter 1975), p. 64. Power and Interdependence cites the works by Ruggie and Cooper on p. 20.
16. Susan Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), reprinted in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), where this claim is made on p. 344. For early uses of the regime terminology, see Fernand de Visscher, Le Regime Nouveau des Détroits, (Brussels: 1924), in Extrait de la Révue de Droit internationale et de Legislation comparée (1924), nos. 1-2; L. Oppenheim, International Law, 5th ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1937; edited by H. Lauterpacht), vol. 1, pp. 207, 366, on regimes for Luxembourg and the Elbe River; David M. Leive, International Regulatory Regimes (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath: Lexington Books, 1976), 2 vols.; and a variety of articles in the American Journal of International Law, including: 1) William L. Butler, “The Legal Regime of Russian Territorial Waters,” vol. 62 (1968), pp. 51-77; 2) Richard Young, “The Legal Regime of the Deep-Sea Floor,” vol. 62 (1968), pp. 641-53; 3) Leo J. Harris, “Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities: A New Regime is Soon to be Adopted by the United States,” vol. 62 (1968), pp. 98-113; 4) W. Michael Riesman, “The Regime of Straits and National Security,” vol. 74 (1980), pp. 48-76; 5) John Norton Moore, “The Regime of Straits and the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea,” vol. 74 (1980), pp. 77–121.
17. David A. Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends Versus Old Tendencies, “World Politics 31 (January 1979), pp. 169, 181.
18. Harrison Wagner, “Economic Interdependence, Bargaining Power and Political Influence,” unpublished paper, University of Texas, Austin, October 1986.
19. Our analysis of the 1971 change in the international monetary system illustrates this point. We emphasized not American weakness, but the underlying strength of the U.S. position, quoting Henry Aubrey to the effect that “a creditor's influence over the United States rests on American willingness to play the game according to the old concepts and rules.” Power and Interdependence, p. 140.
20. Arthur A. Stein, “The Politics of Linkage,” World Politics 33 (October 1980), p. 81.
21. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 177. Oye's discussion of linkage appears in the introduction of Kenneth A. Oye, Donald Rothchild, and Robert J. Lieber, Eagle Entangled: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World (New York: Longman, 1979), especially pp. 13-17; see also Ernst B. Haas, “Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics 32 (April 1980), pp. 357–402.
22. Robert Tollison and Thomas Willett, “An Economic Theory of Mutually Advantageous Issue Linkage in International Negotiations,” International Organization 33 (Fall 1979), pp. 425-49; James Sebenius, Negotiating the Law of the Sea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), especially chap. 6; Sebenius, “Negotiation Arithmetic,” International Organization 37 (Spring 1983), pp. 281–316.
23. For a brief discussion that draws on empirical work in this special issue of World Politics, see Robert Axelrod and Robert O. Keohane, “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” World Politics 39 (October 1986), especially pp. 239–43.
24. John A. Vasquez and Richard W. Mansbach, “The Issue Cycle and Global Change,” International Organization 37 (Spring 1983), pp. 257–279, quotation on p. 274. See also Mansbach and Vasquez, In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), especially chap. 4.
25. See especially Keohane and Nye, “Transgovemmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics 27 (October 1974), pp. 39–62.
26. As a strategy for research, this approach was probably wise, since it is terribly difficult to link domestic politics and the international system together theoretically without reducing the analysis to little more than a descriptive hodgepodge. Recent efforts to bridge this gap, using the concept of state structure, have made notable progress. See Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrialized States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); and Peter J. Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985).
27. Peter A. Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed, International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978), pp. 881-912; and Politics in Hard Times (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).
28. Ruggie, “International Responses to Technology.
29. Robert Jervis identified a Concert of Europe regime in the 19th century; in his discussion of contemporary international politics, however, he looked for a regime in the central strategic relationship between the United States and Soviet Union and failed to find one. Janice Gross Stein and Joseph S. Nye have focused on narrower realms of activity and have discovered meaningful security regimes in contemporary world politics. See Stein, “Detection and Defection: Security Regimes and the Management of International Conflict,” International Journal 40 (Autumn 1985), pp. 599-627; and Nye, “Nuclear Learning and U.S. Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987). See also an article by Roger K. Smith, which appeared just as this essay was being revised, “The Non Proliferation Regime and International Relations,” International Organization 41 (Spring 1987), pp. 253–282. Smith makes a number of perceptive criticisms of regime theory.
30. Krasner, ed., International Regimes, p. 2.
31. See Stephan Haggard and Beth Simmons, “Theories of International Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987).
32. See Keohane, After Hegemony, which discusses money, trade, and oil; and the articles in the Krasner volume, International Regimes, on trade and the balance of payments by Charles Lipson, Jock A. Finlayson and Mark Zacher, and Benjamin J. Cohen. In addition, see articles in International Organization on regimes for: Antarctica, “Antarctica: The Last Great Land Rush” (vol. 34, Summer 1980), by M. J. Peterson; nuclear proliferation, “Maintaining a Non Proliferation Regime” by Joseph S. Nye (vol. 35, Winter 1981), and “The Non Proliferation Regime” (vol. 41, Spring 1987); by Roger K. Smith; civil aviation, “Sphere of Flying: The Politics of International Aviation” (vol. 35, Spring 1981), by Christer Jönsson; Third World debt, “The International Organization of Third World Debt” (vol. 35 Autumn 1981), by Charles Lipson; international shipping, “The Political Economy of International Shipping: Europe versus America” (vol. 39, Winter 1985), by Alan W. Cafruny; and international commodity regimes, “Trade Gaps, Analytical Gaps: Regime Analysis and International Commodity Trade Regulation” (vol. 41, Spring 1987), by Mark Zacher. Three recent book-length studies seeking to account for the evolution or persistence of international regimes are: Charles Lipson, Standing Guard: Protecting Foreign Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Vinod K. Aggarwal, Liberal Protectionism: The International Politics of Organized Textile Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
33. On 3 June 1986, for instance, Soviet First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev stated in a message to the Secretary-General of the United Nations that “it is quite obvious that there is a practical need to start, without delay, setting up an international regime for the safe development of nuclear energy.” New York Times, 4 June 1986, p. A12. We do not presume to know what led Secretary Gorbachev to use the language of regimes; but Soviet scholars have informed us that they began to use the term in relation to the law of the seas conference in the 1970s. Personal conversations, Moscow, June 1986.
34. Stephen D. Krasner, “Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables,” in Krasner, ed., International Regimes (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 355–68.
35. For an early and insightful attempt, see Oran R. Young, Compliance and Public Authority (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Future, 1979).
36. Keohane defines myopic self-interest in terms of “governments perception of the relative costs and benefits to them of alternative courses of action with regard to a particular issue, when that issue is considered in isolation from others.” After Hegemony, p. 99, italics in original.
37. On the demise of the Bretton Woods international monetary regime, for example, see Joanne Gowa, Closing the Gold Window: Domestic Politics and the End of Bretton Woods (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), and John S. Odell, U. S. International Monetary Policy: Markets, Power and Ideas as Sources of Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982). On rule-evasion and circumvention of textile restraints under the umbrella of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, see David Yoffie, Power and Protectionism: Strategies of the Newly Industrializing Countries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
38. Abram Chayes's study of the role of law in the Cuban Missile Crisis is an exception to this statement about the absence of work on international norms, as embodied, for instance, in international regimes. Chayes does not use the language of regimes, but he discusses the impact of international norms for the peaceful settlement of disputes, as embodied in various international practices and agreements, including the Organization of American States and United Nations Charter. See Abram Chayes, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Rule of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
39. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
40. For a critique of Waltz's work along these lines, see John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 35 (January 1983), pp. 261-85; reprinted in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 131–57. An extended argument to this effect is provided in Keohane, After Hegemony, especially chaps. 1, 4–7.
41. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Response to My Critics,” in Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 322–46.
42. For discussions about the analogy between grammar and systemic processes that facilitate cooperation, we are indebted to Hayward Alker, Jr.
43. On issue density, defined as the number and importance of issues arising within a given policy space, see Robert O. Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), reprinted in Krasner, ed., International Regimes. The reference is to p. 155 of the latter volume.
44. On this method of “process-tracing,” see Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational Decision Making,” Advances in Information Processing in Organizations 2 (1985), pp. 21-58; or Alexander L. George, “Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison,” pp. 43–68 in Paul Gordon Lauren, ed., Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory and Policy (New York: Free Press, 1979).
45. There is actually a spectrum of goals between revolutionary and status quo. Moreover, these goals may be affected by the types of means available to states. See Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).
46. The bipolar-multipolar distinction is emphasized by Kenneth N. Waltz, whose Theory of International Politics carefully and systematically develops the notion of political structure whose explanatory inadequacy we are criticizing in this article. For a recent discussion of the 19th century, see Paul W. Schroeder, “The 19th Century International System: Changes in the Structure,” World Politics 39 (October 1986), pp. 1–26. Schroeder emphasizes the development of norms for the protection of small countries. What he calls “changes in structure” would not be considered structural changes by Waltz, and we would refer to them as changes in the process of the international system.
47. Lloyd Etheredge, Can Governments Learn? (New York: Pergamon Press), p. 143; also “Government Learning: An Overview,” in Samuel Long, ed., Handbook of Political Behavior, vol. 2 (New York: Plenum Press, 1981), pp. 73–161.
48. Ernst B. Haas, “Why We Still Need the United Nations: The Collective Management of International Conflict, 1945-1984,” Policy Paper in International Affairs No. 26 (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1986), p. 68.
49. Ernst B. Haas, “Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics 32 (April 1980), p. 390. See also John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).
50. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time (New York: Free Press, 1986).
51. For an argument that this should be a goal of farsighted policymakers, see Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Two Cheers for Multilateralism,” Foreign Policy 61 (Fall 1985).