Global politics in the context of "Global North and Global South"

Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (January 19, 1937 – May 6, 2025) was 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. 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. These theories from Nye are very commonly seen in courses across the U.S., such as I.B. D.P. Global Politics.

Nye was the Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he later held the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus. In October 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He was also a member of the Defense Policy Board. He was a Harvard faculty member since 1964. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a foreign fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Paul James, also known by his pseudonym "Pablo James", is a Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at Western Sydney University, and Director of the Institute for Culture and Society where he has been since 2014. He is a writer on global politics, globalization, sustainability, and social theory.

Robert Owen Keohane (born October 3, 1941) is an American political scientist working in the fields of international relations and international political economy. Following the publication of his influential book After Hegemony (1984), he has become widely associated with the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations, as well as transnational relations and world politics in international relations in the 1970s.

He is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and has also taught at Swarthmore College, Duke University, Harvard University and Stanford University. A 2011 survey of International Relations scholars placed Keohane second in terms of influence and quality of scholarship in the last twenty years. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Keohane is the most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.

In the context of global politics, a policy of deliberate ambiguity (also known as a policy of strategic ambiguity or strategic uncertainty) is the practice by a government or non-state actor of being deliberately ambiguous with regard to all or certain aspects of its operational or positional policies. This is typically a way to avoid direct conflict while maintaining a masked, more assertive, or threatening position on a subject (broadly, a geopolitical risk aversion strategy).