Alexander Cooley

Summary

Alexander Cooley is an affiliate of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. From 2015 to 2021 he directed Columbia University's Harriman Institute and he served as Vice Provost for Research and Academic Centers at Barnard from 2022 to 2025. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow for Eurasian Affairs at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Non-resident Fellow at the Kennan Institute, and an Academy Adjunct Fellow at Chatham House's Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership.

His research examines the international relations of Eurasia and the changing shape of international order. He has written on how authoritarian states project power beyond their borders, on transnational kleptocracy and offshore finance, on great power competition in Central Asia, and on the unraveling of American hegemony and the more contested order emerging in its place.

He is the author or editor of several books, including Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics (with Alexander Dukalskis), Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (with Daniel Nexon) and Great Games Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia. He holds a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD in political science from Columbia University. He writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, and his interviews and commentaries can be found at alexanderacooley.com.

Cooley has collaborated with NUPI since 2015. He was an external collaborator on Undermining Hegemony: The US, China, Russia, and International Public Goods (2015–2018) and Chinese Anger Diplomacy (2021–2025), and he now works with the institute's teams on Eurasia and on international order.