Kyuwon Lee

I am a PhD candidate in the Wilf Family Department of Politics at New York University. In 2023-2024, I will be a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP). In July 2024, I will be joining the University of South California (USC)’s POIR Department as an Assistant Professor.

My research interests are bureaucratic politics and American political institutions. My dissertation is unified by a core question: Does political or interest group influence on government agencies undermine or enhance bureaucratic performance? While there is a widespread perception that agencies subjected to such influence perform worse than those that are not, my dissertation addresses unexplored subtleties regarding this question. Specifically, my dissertation consists of two overarching projects.

1. The first examines how the prospect of future electoral turnover affects policymaking by agencies under presidential influence.
2. The second addresses how the blurred distinction between government officials and interest groups due to the movement of personnel between the private sector and government (“the bureaucratic revolving door”) affects bureaucratic performance and the political participation of interest groups.

To address these questions, I apply both game theoretic approaches and quantitative analyses.

My work has been published or is forthcoming at Journal of Politics.

You can reach out to me at: kwl313 [at] nyu [dot] edu