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Beth Simmons header-background
Beth Simmons

Beth
Simmons

about

I am the Andrea Mitchell Professor of Law, Political Science, and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. My research ranges from international political economy to international policy diffusion to international law to international human rights. Welcome to my website.

BethSimmons

I am the Andrea Mitchell Professor of Law, Political Science, and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I have been at Penn since 2016, having worked over the course of my career as an assistant professor at Duke University, an associate at the University of California at Berkeley, and a full professor at Harvard.

My research ranges from international political economy to international policy diffusion to international law to international human rights. My historical work on the interwar gold standard included research in the archives of the treasuries and centrals banks of England, France and the USA. I spent a year working in the Capital Market division of the International Monetary Fund, working on international monetary policy. My international human rights research benefitted from research sabbaticals at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and New York University Law School’s Straus Institute for Advanced Study of Law & Justice.

Most recently, my research has centered on the hardening of international borders. With generous financial support from the Carnegie Foundation and the National Science Foundation, I examine when, where and why some polities have grown increasingly anxious about porous state borders, and how governments have responded with border barriers. My border research has taken me on an extended exploration of the US-Mexican border; the borders of the United Arab Emirates and Oman; Norway and Russia; Chile and Venezuela, and Israel and its neighbors.

I currently teach primarily in the areas of international law and international relations. I teach at all levels, from undergraduates to law students to PhD candidates. I mentor post-doctoral researchers as well. Outside of the classroom, I have had administrative stints as the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, President of the International Studies Association, and have served as Deputy Dean at Penn Carey Law. It has been my honor to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

research

Select a topic below to learn more.

International Political Economy

International Human Rights

Global Diffusion

Global Performance Indicators

Borders and Boundaries

political economy

International political economy is about the economics of international politics and the politics of international economic choices and relationships.

international human rights

International human rights were created after World War II to try to reduce the suffering people experienced at the hands of officials and to safeguard a degree of human dignity.

global diffusion

In many cases, state policies are not independent. Rather, national choices – from human rights to capital market liberalization – tend to form waves.

global performance indicators

Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) are public assessments that rate, rank, and categorize state qualities, with aim to (re)define global standards and provoke action.

borders and boundaries

International borders are institutions that organize political and social life. These institutions are key to international relations because they define states themselves.

International Political Economy

International political economy is about the economics of international politics and the politics of international economic choices and relationships. This was one of my first areas of research. I wrote a m aster’s t hesis at the University of Chicago on norms of i nternational debt collection enforcement in the 19 th century, and then moved into the early 20 th century when I used a Fulbright Scholarship in London to research the founding of the International Bank for Settlements The BIS was founded as a managing institution for privatizing World War I war debts and reparations. That research revealed how active a role private financiers played in moving debts from states to private markets. My PhD dissertation of the same name became my first book, Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years ( described under the book section of my website )

bank for international settlements

First unofficial meeting of the Bank for International Settlements, April 1930

who adjusts?

Who Adjusts?


My research into international political economy has been very heavily influenced by the path-breaking research and writing of my mentor, Robert Keohane. As a scholar of international cooperation, he influenced me to ask questions about the possibilities for and impediments to international economic cooperation among states. Who Adjusts? located at least part of the answer in domestic politics: the interwar gold standard would not be credible as long as markets believed that the representation of labor interests would inject inflationary pressures into financial markets. New domestic coalitions and configurations made international cooperation by the old rules newly impossible. Highly independent central banks were so concerned with fighting inflation, that they did not contribute to the international adjustment process.

The politics of monetary policy and capital markets formed the core of my research for several years. The Post-World War II years were quite a contrast to the interwar years: international economic relationships became much more institutionalized, with the United States at the core of the system, at least for a few decades. While working for a year in the Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund, I began to research monetary (in)stability in this new setting. One of my articles looked at the importance of multilateral commitment, contained in Article VIII of the IMF statutes, for states to keep their current accounts free from restrictions, and I found that making an explicit declaration to do so had an important effect on currency openness and stability. This research began to spark my interest in the possible constraining power of international law. Another project in this phase included a theory of financial market regulatory harmonization . This research compared different kinds of regulations – for prudential capital in banks, for international accounting practices, for securities disclosures, and anti-money laundering – and argue that in some cases markets encouraged convergence, but in other cases (especially anti-money laundering) they did not.

International institutions such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization have played a significant role in structuring international economic relationships over the past 75 years. These institutions have rules and procedures for trade dispute settlement, which raises issues about who uses them, and to what ends? Research with Andrew Guzman focused on trade dispute settlement shows that escalation to a full-blown legal panel in the WTO depends on the divisibility of the issue at stake. Moreover, we found good evidence in dispute patterns that poor states appear to lack the financial, human, and institutional capital to participate fully in the dispute resolution system.

Finally, I have researched the liberalization and especially the protection of the interests of foreign direct investors. As discussed under my diffusion research, one of my major research findings, with Elkins and Guzman, is that competitive pressures have given rise to the spread of bilateral treaties among states that commit to standards of investment protection and dispute settlement. I have also explored the consequences of the spread of bilateral investment treaties globally and in East Asia. World-wide, capital importing states tend to sign investor protections in this form when they face recession, which affects their negotiating position and the substance of the commitments they make (to the advantage of investors rather than states). The pattern is not quite the same in East Asia, where states have adopted BITs when their economies were growing robustly. These articles demonstrate the political context for BITs negotiations, and suggest some possible criticisms of the nature and spread of investment dispute settlement.

increase fdi protection

International Human Rights

International human rights are a relatively recent legal innovation: they were created after World War II to try to reduce some of the suffering people experienced at the hands of officials and to safeguard a degree of human dignity. Most of my research has explored whether this level innovation has been successful, or at least helpful, in achieving these goals. Among academic researchers, I’m known as an optimist, although a read through my book, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics , is cautiously and conditionally optimistic. I argue that ratified international human rights treaties – for example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against the Discrimination Against Women, the Convention Against Torture, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child – have encouraged much better state effort and outcomes in favor of rights than would have been the case in their absence.

I do not believe that international human rights law has fully been complied with – far from it. But I always encourage people to think about what human rights practice around the world would look like in the absence of the increasingly dense and widely ratified set of treaties, declarations and other instruments in force since the Human Rights Commission negotiated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was accepted unanimously by members of the united Nations in 1948.

human rights instruments in force
human rights convention

My research since completing Mobilizing for Human Rights has bolstered the mechanisms of influence in the book and offered critiques of more skeptical researchers . In work with Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg, we found that the human rights contained in the UDHR and the ICCPR had diffused substantially to national constitutions. In three articles with Cosette Creamer on the Torture Convention , the Women’s Rights Convention, (CEDAW) and other core treaties , we have shown that the process of state self-reporting and review by the treaty bodies has plausibly influenced treaty implementation and practice. With my co-authors, several of my articles critically analyze the logic and evidence behind claims that international human rights have been harmful rather than helpful for human rights.

international influences domestic politics

My human rights work has also intersected with an interest with international criminal law and its enforcement. Shortly after beginning Mobilizing for Human Rights, the International Criminal Court was established and had begun to prosecute serious international crimes – crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocides and egregious human rights violations of a systematic nature. This institution is puzzling: why would states join a Court with the authority potentially to put state agents behind bars for life? With Alison Danner, I found some early evidence for a theory of hands-tying : states without the capacity to credibly commit to try such cases in their own courts had motives to use the ICC to hold violators accountable. Next question: Without a police force or much tangible power, could such an institution succeed? Research with Hyeran Jo Right turned up significant evidence that ICC actions – investigations, warrants – were associated with reductions in intentional civilian killing. Though the evidence was stronger for non-state rebel groups than for state agents, we found evidence that the ICC had likely deterred violence against civilians in civil war settings.

monthly count LRA

Global Diffusion

The late 20th century, and especially the 1980s and 1990s, were a period of intense globalization of the world economy and brought a wave of democratic reforms in much of the world. Clearly interdependence among national economies was growing, but many of our explanations for policy choices were anchored in national politics. My research on policy diffusion shows that in many cases, state policies are not independent. Rather, national choices – from human rights to capital market liberalization to the spread of investment treaties – tended to form waves. Policy adoption tends to cluster in time, accelerated by coercion from powerful countries and institutions; economic competition for markets, trade and investment; learning from the experiences of other countries; and sometimes simply emulation of admired countries.

threshold model of policty adoption

My interests in international political economy sparked my research into how and why various economic policies diffused internationally. With Zach Elkins, we explored the crucial role of market competition for liberalizing capital flows in the 1980s and 1990s. We found evidence that countries liberalized their capital account, current accounts, and exchange rate policies when their economic competitors did so. With Andrew Guzman, we found that there were some strong competitive pressures to protect foreign direct investment by signing bilateral investment treaties as well.

spread of bilateral investment treaties

International norms around human rights protections have also been accelerated by diffusion processes, although the mechanisms are quite different from the case of economic liberalization. Focal human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have offered models for “appropriate” civil and human rights to include in national laws and constitutions. Even human trafficking laws tend to diffuse across countries, through the pressures of the United States and out of concern for negative externalities associated with transnational crime diversion.

Global Performance Indicators

As I was working on international human rights, I collected data about states’ “rights performance.” Working in the area of human trafficking, Judith Kelley and I came to realize that the “data” we were using was not necessarily an objective reality – rather, it might be useful to create reality. This phase of my research focused on Global Performance Indicators (GPIs), defined as regularized public assessments that rate, rank, and categorize state policies, qualities, and/or performance. Such indicators aim to (re)define global standards, spark interstate competition, and provoke action according to specific performance criteria.

Our research led us to see just how widespread the phenomenon of rating and ranking states was. Indeed, the practice of arraying information to elicit explicit comparisons seemed to be spreading among states, international organizations, and non-state actors. To better understand this phenomenon, we conducted interviews with GPI creators in London, Washington, DC, and New York during the summer of 2014. The raters explained how states reacted to being ranked: apparently, countries cared about how they compared to others. Our own analysis revealed that the State Department’s rating system in its Trafficking in Persons Report had significantly impacted countries’ criminalization of human trafficking through multiple causal mechanisms.

growth of global performance indicators (gpi)

Another paper on the theme of GPIs explored the influence of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Indicators on states’ regulatory reforms. This research showed that governments were eager to compete over their ranking for ease of doing business – no doubt to attract foreign and domestic capital. This paper showed that states learned to please the bank, and when they did so, their reforms were much more likely to resemble the ranking criteria than when they took reforms on their own. A survey experiment of international investors confirmed the mechanism: investors were much more likely to consider investment in a country if they had a higher EDB ranking, controlling for other relevant governance and economic conditions. We came to understand the flurry of ranking creation and contestation as a governance struggle to encourage states to alter their behaviors in ways that the raters favored.

who creates global performance indicators (gpi)
where global performance indicators (gpis) come from
global performance measurement systems

Borders and Boundaries

I think of international borders as institutions that organize political and social life. These institutions are key to international relations because they define states themselves. They also have a special place in international law because they are defined by treaties between neighboring states. My early research focused on the important role that legal processes played in settling territorial and border disputes between states. It showed that international court decisions were generally very helpful in facilitating peaceful agreements about where, in fact, the border between two states should be. In one of my favorite studies, I demonstrated that when states settle their border disputes, their bilateral trade increases substantially. Traders and investors take border settlement as evidence of states’ peace intentions and good relations.

After taking a break from border research for a few years, I have returned to it with great interest. International borders have become very salient in international and domestic politics. Now, I focus less on border settlements, and much more on the politics of border management. Territorial divisions that form states are in tension with the processes of globalization that have taken off over the past three decades. My recent work points out the tension between a Sovereign Territorial Order and the Liberal International Order.

My most ambitious empirical project now underway is a massive effort to document border hardening around the world. I work with an NSF-funded team using satellite imagery, Google Earth, and precise geolocation to show exactly where and when border walls, border fences, border crossing inspection areas, and police stations have been built in border areas. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and students lost jobs, we held a “Code-a-thon” in which a small army of paid student workers learned our processes and helped collect and code these images. We have developed the idea of “border orientation” which we conceptualize as a state’s latent preference for displaying a commitment to filter movements at its borders. We have used this concept to show that states with a strong border orientation are more likely to implement international travel bans than to restrict domestic behaviors that would reduce pandemic infections.

border orientation filtering capacity
border orientation

I am currently working with the texts of speeches given at the United Nations to show that border issues are becoming much more salient, more localized, more negative, and more emotional in the last ten years than in the past fifty. And state officials now talk much more about non-state threats at their international borders than threats from other states! These negative sentiments are sometimes more grounded in threat perceptions than in reality, but they accelerate the border hardening we have seen on the ground.

publications

My publications include books, edited volumes, and peer-reviewed articles.

Books

The Power of Global Performance Indicators edited by Judith Kelley and Beth Simmons
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The Power of Global Performance Indicators

Global performance indicators (GPIs), such as ratings and rankings, permeate nearly every type of human activity, internationally and nationally, across public and private spheres. While some indicators aim to attract media readership or brand the creator's organization, others increasingly seek to influence political practices and policies. The Power of Global Performance Indicators goes beyond the basic questions of methodological validity explored by others to launch a fresh debate about power in the modern age, exploring the ultimate questions concerning real-world consequences of GPIs, both intended and unintended. From business regulation to terrorism, education to foreign aid, Kelley and Simmons demonstrate how GPIs provoke bureaucracies, shape policy agendas, and influence outputs through their influence of third parties such as donors and market actors and, potentially, even broader global authority structures.

Mobilizing for Human Rights by Beth Simmons
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Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law In Domestic Politics

International law has long been criticized as weak and ineffectual, and certainly in improving important aspects of human dignity and welfare. The list of scholars who have disparaged international law as useless for securing human rights is long. In this book, I tried to reset the terms of the debate by situating international law in domestic politics. What the critics seemed to forget is that governments who sign and ratify international agreements have just raised expectation and hence the costs associated with honoring those legal commitments. Those with the strongest stakes in treaty compliance are domestic constituencies that have a lot to gain from treaty compliance – not international actors or foreign states who really do not want to get involved on a consistent and respectful basis. The book shows that ratified treaties are focal points that help to mobilize stakeholders to assert rights claims. Importantly this is only possible under certain domestic conditions: when constituencies have the motive and the means to mobilize. Ratified treaties really matter when there is at least some opening to organize without immediate repression and when conditions are bad enough to take costly collective action. Effectively this means that treaties are most important in partial or unstable democracies. Tests of this idea are presented in the area of civil and political rights (fair trials, freedom of religion, and use of the death penalty), women’s rights (to equal employment, education and access to modern reproductive health care), children’s rights (to not have their labor exploited, to be used as child soldiers, and to receive basic health care) and the right to be free from torture. The book concludes that international law is hardly a silver bullet, but it does assist in the realization of human rights compared to the absence of ratified commitments. Given the death of other effective means to secure respect for human rights around the world, international law should be supported rather than disparaged.

Awards

Winner of the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs. Find Out More

Winner of the International Studies Association’s Annual Best Book Award in the field of international studies; Find Out More

Winner of the Stein Rokkan Prize, awarded by the International Social Science Council and European Consortium for Political Research for a very substantial and original contribution in comparative social science research Find Out More

Winner of the American Society for International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship. Find Out More

The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy edited by Beth Simmons
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The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy

The late 20th century, and especially the 1980s and 1990s, were a period of intense globalization of the world economy and brought a wave of democratic reforms in much of the world. The theme of this edited volume is that these were not independent policy choices, they were accelerated by contingent policy diffusion that we describe as resulting from processes of coercion by powerful countries and international actors; economic competition for markets and investment; learning from experiences of other countries; and emulation among countries. These mechanisms are tested empirically using sophisticated quantitative techniques in areas as diverse as capital account and investment policy, human rights and democratization, and government downsizing, privatization and taxation. This collection was one of the first interdisciplinary efforts to understand the international interdependences in national policy choices.

Who Adjusts by Beth Simmons
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Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years

In this book, I explored why the international gold standard was so unstable during the 1920s and 1930s. The answer lies in domestic political coalitions, institutions and inclusion. Previous studies of the spread of the Great Depression have emphasized “tit-for-tat” currency and tariff manipulation and a subsequent cycle of destructive competition. My book analyzes the influence of domestic politics on national responses to the international economy. Labor representation made gold standard stabilization through deflation impossible, because it required policies that were not credible under the more inclusive politics of the interwar years. Independent central banks tended to squeeze out as much inflation as they could, but adjusted through trade protection. Different political regimes choose different economic adjustment strategies, based on national politics and institutions of the era.

Awards

Winner of the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs. Find Out More

Winner of the American Political Science Association's Section on Political Economy Award for the best book or article in political economy published in the past three years Find Out More

Handbook of International Relations edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth Simmons
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Handbook of International Relations

First published in 2002 and thoroughly revised a decade later in 2012, the Handbook of International Relations, which I edited with Walter Carlsnaes and Thomas Risse, was the first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the field. It is based on contributions by the world's leading scholars and is comprised of cutting edge yet highly readable surveys of theories, approaches and topics in international relations. Part I presents historical philosophical and theoretical perspectives. Part II deals with the structures and processes, while Part III covers substantive issues in international relations. This volume is great for deep, insightful essays that cover much of what you would need to know to be well-grounded in the IR literature.

Selected Articles

  • Human Rights

  • GPIs

  • Global Diffusion

  • Borders & Boundaries

  • Political Economy

  • Other

teaching

I teach courses in international relations and international law, as well as more specialized topics like international borders and international humanitarian and criminal law. My classes are often cross listed in political science and law. I teach at all levels, from undergraduate to law students to PhD students – sometimes in the same classes.

Courses

PSCI 353

LAW 708/PSCI 358

LAW 989/PSCI 550

LAW 945

Security and Anxiety at International Borders: Turkey and the USA in Global Perspective

Security and Anxiety at International Borders: Turkey and the USA in Global Perspective

Borders function as distinct markers of statehood and sovereignty, and yet are increasingly contested around the world by state and non-state actors. In this course we inquire into the role that national territorial and international borders have come to play in the national identities of the United States and Turkey. We will place these two countries in the context of their “neighborhoods” to understand the threats and opportunities seen to attend border spaces. By comparing the United States and Turkey the course explores how border policies are understood, produced, and implemented. The international and comparative focus reveals the extent to which what is facing the USA in terms of border security is perhaps not unique.

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International Law and International Relations

International Law and International Relations

This course is an introduction to public international law for students of international relations and an international relations class for law students. We explore the ways in which international law orders international (and sometimes domestic) politics. Emphasis throughout the course is on the relationship between law and politics, on understanding why international law operates as it does, and on issues and developments that illustrate the promise and limits of international law as a way to identify and solve international problems. The course embeds international law in international relations theory. We address the legal sources and how actors use law to organize for common purposes and to resolve disputes. Our exploration of international law also considers a series of contemporary challenges and critiques of international law from varying perspectives.

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Borders and Boundaries in International Relations

Borders and Boundaries in International Relations

This research seminar explores the meanings, rules and consequences of borders and boundaries in international relations. The first part of the course is about how territorial sovereignty and boundedness came to have meaning in international relations. The second part of the course focuses on border issues, actors, and consequences. We examine the meaning and function of boundary-making between states from multiple disciplines and perspectives: political science, international law, international relations, history, geography, sociology, and economics. Borders, border regions and border crossings have multiple meanings as designations of state authority, national security buffers, and expressions of social meaning and opportunities for economic integration. We explore their creation, challenges, and reinforcement over time and around the world. As a seminar designed primarily to stimulate research, we concentrate on formulating interesting research questions, thinking carefully about how to bring data to questions or hypotheses, and designing innovative research.

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Global Research Seminar The Colombian Armed Conflict and the Peace Agreement

Global Research Seminar The Colombian Armed Conflict and the Peace Agreement

The purpose of this course is to expose students to the major concepts and complexities of two crucial arms of public international law: International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Criminal Law (ICL). This course examines the relationship between these branches of law and investigates how they influence contemporary violent conflicts, peacemaking and transitional justice. It combines law and social science to understand how international law is used by and influences a range of actors in violent conflict, from Government actors to nongovernmental organizations armed rebels. A central theme of the course will be the challenges of peacemaking and the practice of transnational justice in the case of Colombia, including a one-week visit during term time.

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PhD Students

Gino Pauselli

Gino Pauselli

Gino Pauselli is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in the study of human rights promotion, international borders, and the politics of foreign aid. His dissertation explores the conditions under which state-to-state pressure generates human rights policy change in target countries using new data on social pressure in three human rights areas: human trafficking, child marriage, and LGBT discrimination. Gino directs our research on the geospatial analysis of border walls (also with Professor Michael Kenwick, Rutgers). We have co-authored a study on the effects of border hardening on human health in border zones. Visit Website

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Karen Nershi

Karen Nershi

Karen Nershi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in international political economy, and her dissertation examines cross-national variation in anti-money laundering enforcement looking specifically at the application of a new law for cryptocurrency exchanges. Beginning in fall 2021, she will be joining the Stanford Internet Observatory as a postdoctoral scholar. Her research has been supported by the University of Pennsylvania GAPSA Provost Fellowship for Innovation and the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics.. Visit Website

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Meghan Garrity

Meghan Garrity

Garrity’s dissertation, “Disorderly and Inhumane: Explaining 100 Years of Mass Expulsion,” investigates why and how governments expel populations en masse. What motivates them to implement an expulsion policy and why don’t more countries do the same? She has created a Global Mass Expulsion dataset documenting 131 expulsion episodes from 1912-2012 affecting nearly 30 million citizens and non-citizens. Then through four paired-comparison case studies, she compares countries that expelled with countries that seemed likely to expel but refrained, in order to isolate the key factors that enable or constrain government expulsion decisions. Visit Website

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Christopher Blair

Christopher Blair

Christopher Blair is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and a graduate affiliate of the Penn Identity & Conflict Lab. His research interests span international relations and comparative politics, and he has particular interests in the dynamics of transnational insurgency and international migration. In his dissertation, Chris develops a framework for understanding how and why border control affects transnational militancy, and explores the influence of border control on violence using novel microdata from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. His research leverages multi-method tools ranging from survey and natural experiments to original data collection. Visit Website

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Rachel Hulvey

Rachel Hulvey

Rachel Hulvey is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with research interests spanning internet governance, international organizations, and international law. Her dissertation examines China’s attempts to shift the liberal ideology of the international information order through strategies of exit and voice. Rachel and I have initiated a cyber borders research project and co-authored a paper developing a liberal theory of cyber borders, and using original data, show that liberal governments experience bottom-up pressure to “border” the internet. Rachel also has a strong interest in human rights relating to the internet and cyber space.

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Sabrina Arias

Sabrina Arias

Sabrina Arias is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania concentrating in International Relations, with a secondary concentration in American Politics. Her research engages in topics including public opinion, international cooperation, American foreign policy, and climate politics. Her dissertation examines how small and medium countries employ lobbying strategies and diplomatic capital to “punch above their weight” at the UN. Before coming to Penn, Sabrina worked in the private sector as a market research consultant, taught English in Malaysia as a Fulbright ETA, and earned an MA from Columbia and BA from Rutgers. Visit Website

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Siyao Li

Siyao Li

Siyao Li's research focuses on the politics of foreign direct investment and trade, and business-government relations. Her book style dissertation project investigates how multinational corporations investing into weak institutional environments protect their intellectual property and technology assets, and why they use host government institutions to do so. In particular, she considers the conditions under which MNC bargaining power is strengthened against host states, and evaluates the institutional effects that MNC strategies achieve. Other projects examine business-government interactions in the contexts of China and the US, China’s international economic initiatives, and public opinion towards international trade and local data governance. Visit Website

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Mikhail Strokan

Mikhail Strokan

Mikhail A. Strokan is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His current research focuses on five Eurasian petrostates that descended from the Soviet Union: Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Despite the common legacy of Soviet-era infrastructure and energy exploitation, significant variation has emerged in their degree of resource dependence and in the management of natural resources and revenues His dissertation analyzes this variation and generate some specific insights about the conditions that allow natural resources to be a net asset to economic development rather than a curse.

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contact

I hope you have found my research and teaching interesting. My office is located in the Penn Carey Law Building at the University of Pennsylvania. Feel free to contact me by email using this form.

Penn Carey Law
3501 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6204