After reading Robert O. Keohane’s article “Hegemony and After: What Can Be Said About the Future of American Global Leadership?” admittedly I was confused – more so because I had not realized that it was a not an original piece but rather a response to one. Keohane’s response to both Kagan and Lieber’s articles bled a clear distinction in how Keohane himself views the United States as a hegemon, and how it continues to be a present, prevalent, and successful one, in contradiction to the previously mentioned authors. While reading through the article, the main tenets discussed in POLI 367 are prevalent through discussions of positivism, institutionalism, and the inherent “Americaness” of the discipline of IR.

First and foremost, Keohane’s article discusses American hegemony through global leadership through institutions and material power directly parallels into the American hegemony over the discipline of International Relations. As discussed many times in class, international relations remains to be a discipline dominated by American theorists. Through these American influenced paradigms, their values and morals lend to the way the international society views the United States – a hegemon both in practice and in theorem. Keohane lists the United Nations, IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization as key actors to global affairs and are inadvertently all founded on the premise of American principles and actions. Since these institutions were introduced partly in response to the advice given by the former American president, Woodrow Wilson, the United States is directly at the forefront for its conception and as so, is built on the foundations and values of its country of origin. Perhaps through this assertion of institutionalism, Keohane has suggested his own predispositions, whether they be intentional or not, that the United States is inherently a hegemon both institutionally, in the discipline of IR, and in the international sphere altogether. The reason why I mention whether or not Keohane is aware of his predispositions is due to his defence of the UN security council being made up of five permanent country members therefore suggesting its multilateral nature. Surely, this is the case in the fact that the UN functions as a multilateral body however its conception is inherently American. In other words, from its conception, the institutions tend to reflect American values.

The entirety of Keohane’s article reflects a defence of American hegemony and that without it and its leadership, the world is doomed to fail. In his conclusion, Keohane lays out six reasons as to what is known and what is unknown to the world. The first and second point mentions that with the absence of leadership, world politics suffers and the solution to which is through multilateral institutions. This directly coincides with the previously mentioned point of American influence in institutions and its foundational contributions. The next four points acknowledge the prime position of the United States as a democracy, over other forms of government, to lead global political cohesion as a hegemon. In essence, perhaps what Keohane is trying to say here is that American politics is the politics of the world and this is why IR is predispostioned to be American.

In relation to positivism, Keohane demonstrated annoyance with Kagan’s lack of empirical evidence. A growing discourse amount international relations theorists and academics alike have been the place of positivism within the discipline and what that place entails. In recent years, the international relations discipline has seen a growth in the use of positivism as a means to provide empirical evidence or rather the Kuhnian means to prove their theory. Empirical evidence, in a sense, is argued to prove the validity of a claim and entrench these paradigms into “scientific findings” comparable to other hard sciences and the means in which they prove their highly regarded theories.

International Relations remains to be a discipline of many facets and why it is constantly questioned as being divided in nature. Keohane provides us with an American point of view of IR, whether he intended to or not, pointed out its roots with American politics.

As a Political Science major, the topic of theory and internationals relations has always sparked my interests, simultaneously inflicted thoughts of confusion, and consequently urged my desires to take POLI 367B. Because International Relations is a discipline that has only very recently come to the limelight of scholarly discourse, its youth intrigues me even more. Granted, it takes roots from philosophers of centuries past such as Hobbes and Locke, it takes a more modern approach to the way states function within an international sphere and introduces a relatively new schools of thought such as feminism and green theory. The schools of thought that we will be discussing this semester have never been dealt with in intense detail in any of my past classes and I hope to do that with this particular course.

The topics of the first two weeks of class have been about the fundamental aspects of Political Science and International Relations. More specifically, the –isms and –ologies that are embedded into these topics and how these correlated to what is referred to as “science”. Throughout my time as a Political Science undergraduate, the question I was most posed by members of other disciplines was what made Political Science, indeed a “science”? (I bet you could already see their snarky, snickering, and sarcastic faces, as I’m sure some have you have experienced!) In first year, I didn’t even know what to say. What was it that made political science, a science? Then I took Poli 380 and learned some statistics and knew for sure there was some “science” involved! But for the longest time I would answer it by explaining the use of empirical research, historical observations, and the theories that are tested, debated, proven, and disproven. This, to me, is what made Political Science a “science”, or at least it only encompasses half of what I would now answer as this course has continued to enlighten my definition of Political Science.

As for the textbook, I’m quite glad that for once I’ll be buying a textbook and reading the entirety of it and for the most part, I’m not falling asleep to one of its pages! Reading the first few chapters of the book, I find myself losing track of time and pages due to its compelling nature. The topics are well explained and for a theory textbook, understood with only a few, if not one, read through to grasp a concept. Finally a textbook I can count on!

Anyway, we’re only a few weeks in and I know my optimism will slowly dwindle as deadlines and exams approach. Who knows maybe this course will be nasty and brutish? But hey, at least it’ll be short! Haha all jokes aside, I really do look forward to a great semester and to come out with much more knowledge than when I first came to this class.

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