Ndzendze and Marwala
Bhaso Ndzendze (University of Johannesburg) and Tshilidzi Marwala (Rector of the United Nations University) co-authored Artificial Intelligence and International Relations Theories in 2023, providing the most sustained theoretical application of Kindleberger's hegemonic stability framework to contemporary AI governance. Their analysis identified the structural parallel between the 1930s failure of international coordination — when Britain could no longer play the hegemonic role and the United States was not yet willing to — and the emerging AI governance failure in which neither the United States nor China provides the public goods the transition requires.
In the AI Story
Their analytical contribution extends Kindleberger in two important directions. First, they document the specific mechanisms through which AI governance produces Kindleberger Trap dynamics: the asymmetric concentration of AI capabilities in a small number of firms whose home governments are engaged in strategic competition, the difficulty of establishing shared safety standards when the competing powers view safety research as a competitive disadvantage, the absence of neutral institutional venues where coordination might occur.
Second, they apply the framework from the perspective of middle powers and Global South nations that neither hegemon represents. Most Kindleberger-inspired analysis of AI governance is written from American or European perspectives and treats the governance challenge as one of Western institutions managing an Eastern challenger. Ndzendze and Marwala write from South African institutions with different interests and different analytical commitments. Their work illuminates aspects of the governance problem that Western analyses systematically miss.
The book's integration of hegemonic stability theory with international relations frameworks more broadly — realism, liberalism, constructivism — provides the comparative analytical tools that pure Kindleberger-framework analysis lacks. The framework's strength is its historical depth. Its weakness is its focus on financial dimensions that undersells the geopolitical and normative dimensions of contemporary technology governance. Ndzendze and Marwala's synthesis addresses this gap.
Origin
The book was published in 2023 by Palgrave Macmillan, emerging from the authors' extended research programs at the University of Johannesburg and related institutions.
Key Ideas
Explicit Kindleberger application. The book is among the most sustained efforts to apply hegemonic stability theory to AI.
Global South perspective. The analysis illuminates governance dimensions Western analyses miss.
Structural parallel with 1930s. The AI governance vacuum exhibits the same features as interwar financial coordination failure.
Integration with IR theory. The framework is extended through realism, liberalism, and constructivism.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Bhaso Ndzendze and Tshilidzi Marwala, Artificial Intelligence and International Relations Theories (2023)
- Joseph S. Nye Jr., 'The Kindleberger Trap' (Project Syndicate)
- Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression
- Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, The Age of AI