Welcome to my homepage!

My name is Sukwon Lee, and I am currently serving as an adjunct professor after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Conflict Resolution and Multilateral Cooperation at New York University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from NYU in 2019.

My research investigates how domestic political institutions shape international cooperation and conflict, with a particular focus on alliance politics, armament, signaling, and war. I examine when leaders are willing to trade policy autonomy for security and how regime type conditions these choices. I also explore how international politics feeds back into domestic political outcomes, including regime change and leaders’ survival strategies.

I currently have two job market papers:

• The Tug-of-War: Proposing Alliances, Avoiding Commitment (under review)
  This paper analyzes how democratization shapes the likelihood of alliance proposals. I show that as democracies deepen, alliance proposals initially become more likely, but beyond a certain point commitment costs dominate, reducing proposal rates. The paper also demonstrates that higher expected commitment lowers proposal rates among democracies.

• Transition, Parity, or Transitional Parity—Rethinking Power Transition Theory (under review; presented at MPSA 2023)
  This paper revisits the foundations of power transition theory. I argue that transition—not simple parity—drives major war risk. I formalize “transitional parity” as intensified rivalry during shifting growth differentials and provide historical evidence consistent with this interpretation.

Born and raised in Korea, where I also completed my master’s degree, I bring to my work a deep understanding of Korean politics and East Asian dynamics, including China and Japan. This regional expertise informs both my theoretical and empirical contributions.

I am prepared to teach courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in International Relations, International Politics of East Asia, Game Theory, Mathematics for Political Science, and Quantitative Methods.