Joseph Samuel Nye, Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he pioneered the theory of soft power and explained the distinction between it and hard power. His notion of "smart power" ("the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy") became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration.More
