Jonas Nahm

I am an Assistant Professor of Energy, Resources, and Environment at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

My research interests focus on the intersection of economic and industrial policy, energy policy, and environmental politics. I study the role of the state in processes of industrial restructuring that accompany policy responses to climate change and clean energy transitions more broadly. My work utilizes clean energy transitions in China, Germany, and the United States to engage two debates in comparative political economy: (1) the role of the state in shaping the international division of labor in highly globalized industries, and (2) sources of state capacity in interest group politics during periods of industrial restructuring.

My book project, titled Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy, uses the development of renewable energy sectors to investigate the political economy of innovation and industrial development in highly globalized industries. The manuscript shows that new possibilities for collaboration among firms in the global economy have reinforced national patterns of industrial specialization. In the decades before international economic integration made it easier for firms from around the world to work together on tasks ranging from production to innovation, differences in national capitalisms yielded equally distinct national industrial specializations for production, innovation, and competitiveness. Globalization has since challenged the primacy of nation states by moving beyond their territorial reach many of the activities that now make up the global economy. However, as I show in the book, globalization not only continues to be mediated by domestic institutions, it also causes persistent and consequential divergence of such institutions and national industrial specializations over time.

My research has been funded by the Minerva Research Initiative and the U.S. Army Research Office, the German National Academic Foundation, the World Bank Institute and the Korean Development Institute, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Harvard Center for European Studies, the MIT Center for International Studies, and the Caroll Wilson Foundation. I was an MIT Energy Fellow and a Fellow of the German National Academic Foundation.

Prior to coming to SAIS, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. I hold a PhD in Political Science from MIT and speak German and Mandarin Chinese.