After Hegemony

by Keohane, Robert O.

• ISBN13: 9780691122489
• ISBN10: 0691122482
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-28
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This book is a comprehensive study of cooperation among the advanced capitalist countries. Can cooperation persist without the dominance of a single power, such as the United States after World War II? To answer this pressing question, Robert Keohane analyzes the institutions, or "international regimes," through which cooperation has taken place in the world political economy and describes the evolution of these regimes as American hegemony has eroded. Refuting the idea that the decline of hegemony makes cooperation impossible, he views international regimes not as weak substitutes for world government but as devices for facilitating decentralized cooperation among egoistic actors. In the preface the author addresses the issue of cooperation after the end of the Soviet empire and with the renewed dominance of the United States, in security matters, as well as recent scholarship on cooperation.

Table of Contents

PREFACE TO THE 2005 EDITION	ix
PREFACE	xxi
I Questions and Concepts
1 Realism, Institutionalism, and Cooperation	5	(13)
2 Politics, Economics, and the International System	18	(13)
3 Hegemony in the World Political Economy	31	(18)
II Theories of Cooperation and International Regimes
4 Cooperation and International Regimes	49	(16)
5 Rational-Choice and Functional Explanations	65	(20)
6 A Functional Theory of International Regimes	85	(25)
7 Bounded Rationality and Redefinitions of Self-Interest	110	(25)
III Hegemony and Cooperation in Practice
8 Hegemonic Cooperation in the Postwar Era	135	(47)
9 The Incomplete Decline of Hegemonic Regimes	182	(35)
10 The Consumers' Oil Regime, 1974-81	217	(26)
IV Conclusion
11 The Value of Institutions and the Costs of Flexibility	243	(17)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	260	(21)
INDEX	281