Keohane and Nye: Power and Interdependence

RO Keohane and JS Nye, Power and interdependence (Longman New York, 2001).

"We live in an era of interdependence. This vague phrase expresses a poorly understood but widespread feeling that the very nature of world politics is changing" (3).

Some see the traditional state as unraveling and being supplanted by newer actors. Traditionalists call this view "globaloney", according to the authors (3).

"Our task in this book is not to argue either the modernist or traditionalist position. Because our era is marked by both continuity and change, this would be fruitless. Rather, our task is to provide a means fo distilling and blending the wisdom in both positions by developing a coherent theoretical framework for the political analysis of interdependence" (4).

The authors explore how increasing economic interdependence is changing politics. They also are interested in how politics is changing the nature of economic interdependence, and refer to governmental programs and actions designed to create procedures, rules, etc., as international regimes. They wonder how and why these international regimes are alter over time.

They explore the rhetoric of interdependence.

Some believe that interdependence will lessen conflict. This is naïve, and interdependence could just as easily increase conflict. This empirical question aside, the more likely claim is that interdependence will change the nature of conflict. Also, interdependnece is not synonymous with mutual benefit. Cases of mutual dependence, where both do not benefit but both are still wedded represent interdependence. Also, interdependence will change the cost of interaction because it has the potential to restrict autonomy.

The authors explore the distinction between joint gains and how those gains are divided. Economists typically address the former, not the later.

"We must therefore be cautious about the prospect that rising interdependence is creating a brave new world of cooperation to replace the bad old world of international conflict" (10).

Power and Interdependence:

"Power can be thought of as the ability of an actor to get others to do something they otherwise would not do...Power can also be conceived in terms of control over outcomes. In either case, measurement is not simple" (11).

The authors make a distinction between sensitivity and vulnerability. The former is how responsive changes in one country make impacts in other countries. "Sensitivity interdependence is created by interactions within a framework of policies" (12). "Vulnerability can be defined as an actor's liability to suffer costs imposed by external events even after policies have been altered...Vulnerability dependence can be measured only by the costliness of making effective adjustments to a changed environment over a period of time" (13).

International Regime Change:

International regimes are not insignificant, though they may lack serious teeth, ie., enforcement mechanisms.

"International regimes are intermediate factors between the power structure of an international system and the political and economic bargaining that takes place within it. The structure of the system...profoundly affects the nature of the regime...The regime, in turn, affects and to some extent governs the political bargaining and daily decision-making that occurs within the system" (21).

Ch 2: Realism and Complex Interdependence:

"The realist assumptions about world politics can be seen as defining an extreme set of conditions or ideal type. One could also imagine very different conditions. In this chapter, we shall construct another ideal type, the opposite of realism. We call it complex interdependence" (23).

Realists focus on power and international anarchy.

Three factors give rise to complex interdependence: linkage strategies; agenda setting; transnational and transgovernmental relations.