Johnathan Guy


Postdoctoral Research Scholar
        Center for Political Economy
        Columbia University

Incoming Assistant Professor (Aug. 2026)
        Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
        Georgia Institute of Technology

Curriculum Vitae
jg5068@columbia.edu

About

I am a political scientist at Columbia University. My work focuses on the comparative politics of climate change, energy transitions, and natural resources, primarily in South and Southeast Asia.

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.

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, experiments, 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
“Defaulting to Decarbonization: Financial Insolvency and Energy Transition in India.”
When do governments embrace the energy transition? I study this question in the context of India, where electricity procurement is governed at the subnational level. Electoral politics motivates state governments to distribute electricity rents to their supporters, resulting in financial stress for electricity distribution utilities (DISCOMs). Using newly digitized data, I investigate the political causes of financial stress and whether it is associated with DISCOM procurement decisions. I find that financial stress is associated with populist ruling parties and agrarian lobbies. Against conventional wisdom, however, financial stress is associated with greater procurement of renewable energy and less procurement of fossil fuels. Mechanism tests suggest that coal procurement is more sensitive to financial constraints, as distressed DISCOMs cut back on coal deliveries while facing central government-driven incentives to maintain renewable energy commitments. The findings speak to how political patronage and fiscal conditions shape energy transitions in developing democracies.

“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.

“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: 1) green opportunism and 2) 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 ideas are illustrated through elite interviews and historical analysis of India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

“What Do We Learn From Green Backlash? Inferential Problems in the Study of Climate Policymaking.”
Governments around the world are enacting climate policies which elicit intense opposition. In response, scholars have proposed insulating policymakers from political accountability. I examine this idea through a formal model of decarbonization as a public good involving economic contributions from a policy-making group and a constituent group. I show that the effect of insulation depends on whether policymakers value decarbonization more than their constituents. Yet relative preferences are hard to infer from behavior, as even green constituents may engage in green backlash against brown policymakers. Discontent may arise not only from paying too much, but also from the perception that others are paying too little, especially in contexts with high economic inequality. Further, constituents may strategically downplay their valuation of decarbonization to avoid exploitation by policymakers. Insulating policymakers may backfire by either empowering brown interests or weakening constituents’ incentives to share information. Agenda control presents inferential problems for scholars, policymakers, and publics.

“Does Democracy FiT? Regimes and Renewables Revisited,” with Ishana Ratan.
Feed-in Tariff (FiT) policies have catalyzed the majority of global renewable energy deployment, raising questions about the political causes of their enactment and implementation. We revisit the prominent hypothesis that democracy results in feed-in tariff adoption using a novel dataset which includes more and better data than previous studies. Contrary to existing literature, we find that the relationship between democracy and FiT adoption only holds within rich countries. Leveraging data on electoral institutions, regime support groups, and solar projects, we show that this is likely due to the fact that FiTs do not consistently produce the distributional outcomes predicted by the democratic hypothesis. Rather, second-order features of FiT design yield patterns which conform to prevailing and diverse domestic political economies. Drawing upon elite interviews in Vietnam, Malaysia, and India, we argue FiT adoption has less to do with regime type than the willingness of incumbents to trade-off fiscal discipline for enhanced targeting of rents and certainty of adequate supply.

In Progress

 “Political Economy of Compensation in Fossil Fuel Economies,” with Nikhar Gaikwad.

“Resource Nationalism and Climate Attitudes.”

“Democratization and Natural Resources: Evidence from Indonesia.”

“Scientists as Environmental Ministers,” with Bill Kakenmaster.