World Politics (IR)
Email: sujincha@umich.edu
Dissertation Title: State, Firms, and Citizens: The Politics of Industrial Policy in a Global Economy
Summary: My research intersects the fields of international relations, international political economy, and comparative political economy. In my dissertation, I argue and empirically demonstrate that governments and citizens evaluate firms not simply based on national ownership, but on whether a firm's contributions to the domestic economy are visible and politically attributable, with employment at the center. I contend that industrial policy operates through a shared evaluative logic across elite and mass politics: firms that render their domestic benefits legible are more likely to be seen as deserving of state support, regardless of who owns them. Drawing on research in economic statecraft, distributive politics, and the political economy of globalization, I argue that the politics of industrial policy cannot be fully understood without accounting for how visibility and attributability shape perceptions of which firms belong to the national economy. To substantiate this claim, I provide an empirical foundation through firm-level data on U.S. subsidies from 2000 to 2023 and two survey experiments on a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults.
My findings reveal that foreign-owned firms are less likely to receive government support and receive smaller amounts when they do, but that this penalty is significantly reduced among labor-intensive firms. Importantly, I demonstrate that it is the visibility of a firm's domestic workforce, rather than ownership or supply-chain geography, that most strongly conditions subsidy allocation. Through survey experiments, I provide robust evidence that citizens follow the same logic, penalizing foreign-linked firms most strongly when their domestic contributions are less visible. This dissertation is part of my broader research agenda on industrial policy, foreign direct investment, and economic nationalism, and speaks to wider debates about the political sustainability of open economies under geopolitical pressure. I employ a range of methodological approaches, including observational analysis and survey experiments, to investigate how political actors evaluate firms in an era of supply chain decoupling and great power competition. My research has been published in the Review of International Political Economy, International Interactions, Review of International Organizations, and more journals. My research has received support from the Rackham Graduate School and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Fellowship at the Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. For more information about my research, please feel free to email me or visit my website: sites.google.com/umich.edu/sujincha.
Personal Website: sites.google.com/umich.edu/sujincha
