Jonas Nahm

I am an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

My research interests lie in comparative political economy, at the intersection of climate policy, environmental politics, and economic and industrial policy. Clean energy transitions—the move away from fossil fuels for instance through the use of renewable energy and the electrification of the global auto sector—are changing domestic and international politics in real time. Against this background, my research uses the analytical tools of political science to examine what drives such state responses to climate change and to identify political obstacles to government attempts to decarbonize domestic economies.

Specifically, my work builds on insights from comparative politics and comparative political economy to study how economic coalitions—and the actions of firms in particular—structure the dynamics of clean energy transitions. At the same time, my research takes advantage of such transitions as especially useful laboratories to build and refine theory, as they bring together rapid technological change, interest group conflict between emerging industries and legacy sectors, and degrees of state intervention in the economy rarely witnessed outside of the context of late industrialization. 
 
My research agenda now spans three separate but interrelated strands: (a) green industrial policy and the drivers of the division of labor in the global economy, (b) sources of state capacity to overcome external opposition to clean energy transitions and climate policy, and (c) the political economy of green growth.

My book Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy (Oxford University Press 2021) examines the development of the wind and solar industries, two historically important sectors that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition between nations, highlighting instead the central role of international collaboration in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis. The book won the APSA award for best book on Science, Technology, and Politics and the ISA award for best book in Political Economy.

​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.