Nye And Keohane's Power And Interdependence: World Politics In Transition?

JOSEPH NYE JR
Introduction:
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr, an American political scientist is one of the most influential political thinkers in the last twenty years (according to a 2011 trip survey). In his 1977 book Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, which he co-authored with Robert Keohane, Nye says that we live in an era of interdependence. Through the book, Nye and Keohane attempt to develop the concept of complex interdependence and explain the concept. They also co-found the international relations theory of neo-liberalism in the book as a response to Kenneth Waltz’s theory of neo-realism. They seek to explain how over the years the transnational relations and international politics are changing in such a way that the military force is decreasing and instead there is an increase in the other forms of interdependence such as economic interdependence between nations, which increases cooperation between nations as international cooperation is something that every nation wants. Power and interdependence makes it clear that world politics is changing, and they try to understand how the changes are happening alongside rapid technological change. The book tries to explain the role of power and of economic interdependence in current international politics

This is done in a way to contest the realist assumptions that were put forward by theorists such as Hans Morgenthau earlier in his book Politics among Nations. Nye and Keohane envision a world where multinational corporations and transnational organizations play a major role rather than just the governments of states, this is what they describe as complex interdependence. According to them complex interdependence has three major characteristics, presence of multiple channels which connect societies, absence of hierarchy among nations and the decreasing use of military