Johnathan Guy
Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
Georgia Institute of Technology
Curriculum Vitae
jguy38@gatech.edu
Johnathan Guy
Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
Georgia Institute of Technology
Curriculum Vitae
jguy38@gatech.edu
About
My research has been supported by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at UC San Diego, the Center on the Politics of Development (UC Berkeley), the Center for Contemporary India (UC Berkeley), the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI), the Lau Fellowship in Climate Equity (UC Berkeley), and the Center for Political Economy at Columbia University.
Prior to Georgia Tech, I was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Center for Political Economy at Columbia University. I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2025.
Publications
"National Models of Climate Governance" (2023)
Nature Climate Change, 13(4), pp. 189–195, with Esther Shears and Jonas Meckling
National climate institutions structure the process of climate mitigation policymaking and shape climate policy ambition and performance. Countries have, for example, been building science bodies, passing climate laws and creating new agencies. Here we provide the first systematic comparison of climate institutions across 21 of the largest emitters. Drawing on an original dataset, we identify in a bottom-up cluster analysis four national models of climate governance: Climate Technocracies, Climate Developmentalists, Carbon Fragmentists and Carbon Centralists. These national models of climate governance are associated with policy ambition and performance. Climate Technocracies and Developmentalists tend to score higher than Carbon Fragmentists and Centralists in policy ambition and performance. The relative ambition of national models of governance is associated with some macro-institutional and macro-economic features, but not others. This suggests potential for domestic and international policymakers to invest in building national climate institutions across country settings to strengthen climate policy capacity.
Book Project
Against the Current: Electricity Patronage and the Energy Transition
Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, many low-carbon power generation technologies (wind, solar, geothermal) became economically feasible at scale. Yet countries vary in the extent to which they have taken advantage of this opportunity. My ongoing book project seeks to explain variation in the electricity procurement strategies of governments. I draw on formal theory, cross-national and administrative data, and comparative historical analysis based on hundreds of elite interviews in India and Indonesia. The project analyzes the conditions under which incumbent governments have incentives to plan for renewable energy over fossil fuels, linking the energy transition to broader debates over non-programmatic distributive politics and economic reform in developing countries.
Working Papers
"Electricity Patronage and the Energy Transition: Indonesia in Comparative Perspective."
Governments across the Global South are making choices between clean electricity or fossil fuels. Electricity procurement regimes—the practices governing how governments and utilities allocate generation contracts and associated rents—are a critical but overlooked determinant of energy transition outcomes. Drawing on comparative historical analysis and extensive fieldwork in Indonesia, India, and South Africa, I argue that the programmatic character of electricity procurement regimes shapes whether governments can credibly commit to renewable energy producers, select least-cost technologies over patronage-laden alternatives, and provide the collective goods renewables require to scale. Patronage-based procurement regimes, on the other hand, systematically favor fossil fuels. I trace Indonesia’s coal entrenchment to its patronage-based procurement regime, in which clientelist party competition, weak executive constraints, and failed reforms concentrated discretion in the state-owned utility PLN, which operated as a broker for the ruling coalition. Comparative cases in India and South Africa show how programmatic reforms enabled renewable scale-up despite similarly powerful fossil fuel incumbents. The findings advance a meso-level account that bridges the comparative politics literature on patronage and the study of global energy transitions.
"Defaulting to Decarbonization? Financial Insolvency and the Energy Transition in India's States."
How do financial constraints shape the energy transition in developing countries? I study this question in India, where electricity procurement is governed at the subnational level. Electoral politics motivates state governments to subsidize electricity consumption, resulting in financial stress for electricity distribution utilities (DISCOMs). Using multiple sources of original data on utility and plant operations, I investigate the relationship between financial distress and decarbonization. I theorize that the effect of utility insolvency depends on the margin considered—dispatch vs. capacity investment—and on institutions. Counterintuitively, but consistent with my theory, I find that financial stress is associated in the short run with greater relative procurement of renewable energy and less procurement of fossil fuels. Mechanism tests suggest that coal dispatch is more sensitive to liquidity constraints, as distressed DISCOMs cut back on coal deliveries while renewable energy remains protected by “must-run” dispatch regulations. In contrast, I find at most weak evidence that insolvency raises challenges for decarbonizing electricity in the long run: insolvency shows no relationship with renewable-energy tendering, only suggestive evidence that it slows renewable capacity investment, and similarly weak evidence that it curtails expansion of transmission lines that renewables need to scale. The results qualify the conventional wisdom that electricity utility insolvency is a binding constraint on the energy transition.
“Low Carbon for the Short Term? Political Time Horizons and Incentives for Energy Transition.”
When do governments encourage decarbonization? Existing scholarship emphasizes the short time horizons of governments as an impediment to climate change mitigation. Yet energy transitions in developing countries are often initiated by governments with short time horizons. Using a formal model, I reconcile these ideas in the context of electricity. My theory captures two mechanisms through which short time horizons may motivate incumbents to embrace the energy transition: green opportunism and fossil fuel neglect. Under green opportunism, short-termist governments are disproportionately responsive in moments—sometimes of crisis—where low-carbon energy offers greater short-term benefits. Under fossil fuel neglect, short-termist governments inadvertently undermine the domestic fossil fuel economy by under-investing in its long-run productivity. An extension of the model lends additional insights: Investment hold-up problems bias governments against low-carbon energy, but towards donor preferences. These propositions find empirical support from large-N cross-national analysis and within-case process tracing of India and Indonesia.
“When the River Runs Dry: Political Barriers to Climate Policy Implementation,” with Anthony Calacino, Ishana Ratan, and Aaditee Shankar.
When do governments act on climate change? Previous research suggests that climate shocks can spur policy change, but evidence is mixed. We theorize that shocks create demand for policy adoption, but that political incentives to follow through on these policies are weak, leading to non-implementation. We test these claims in the context of drought-induced hydropower shortages, or hydrostress. Leveraging a novel measurement strategy using fine-grained global hydrological data, we find that hydrostress increases the likelihood of adopting policies that promote alternative renewable energy. Consistent with our theory, however, these policies have little average effect on energy outcomes, revealing a persistent implementation gap. We develop and test several explanations for this gap using cross-national data, survey experiments, and more than one hundred original interviews across four major hydropower-dependent countries. The balance of evidence suggests that accountability deficits, low state capacity, and elite capture play important roles in stymieing implementation. Our findings illuminate key political drivers of climate inaction.
In Progress
“The Mass Politics of Resource Nationalism,” with Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Eve Warburton.
“Targeting the Transition: Pork, Path Dependence, and the Political Economy of Green Industrial Policy,” with Simran Singh.
“Fields of Green: Landed Power in the Energy Transition,” with A Kalaiyarasan.