David G Victor
Biographic Data
| ID | 1114307 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David G Victor |
| GIVEN NAMES | David G |
| FAMILY NAME | Victor |
| SIGNATURE | VICTOR D G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1136-0354 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1420 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Modelling the impacts of policy sequencing on energy decarbonization
Removing atmospheric CO 2 through mass scaleup of crops with enhanced root systems
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that societies may need to remove 5–16 GtCO 2 from the atmosphere annually to reach global net-zero CO 2 emissions within this century. Yet there has been little analysis of how quickly carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies could scale to meet this expected need. We develop a new integrated modeling approach for assessing scalability that combines insights from the history of analogous tec…
Wilson’s bottleneck
Planetary sustainability is in trouble, heading towards what pioneer of evolutionary biology, E.O Wilson, twenty-two years ago called a “bottleneck”. Created through the actions of humanity this is an increasingly narrow passage through which only some species can pass, and on which humans depend to provide the sources of re-radiation. What is lost is hard to impossible to restore. Keeping this passage as wide as possible is crucial, but the tren…
Critical hydrologic impacts from climate change: Addressing an urgent global need
Eyes Wide Open: Strategic Elite Views of South Korea’s Nuclear Options
Technology to solve global problems: An emerging consensus for green industrial policy
Even as most mainstream policy analysts support the idea of active industrial policy to create new green industries and cut carbon pollution, important dissenting voices still question whether government intervention is possible without extreme waste. We suggest that many of today’s debates, which echo debates of the 1970s, need updating to reflect the reality that a lot has been learned about where and how government can pursue effective industr…
Atmospheric verification of emissions reductions on paths to deep decarbonization
A central challenge for sustaining international cooperation to cut global greenhouse gas emissions is confidence that national policy efforts are leading to a meaningful impact on the climate. Here, we apply a detection protocol to determine when the measurable signal of atmospheric CO 2 can be distinguished from the noise of the carbon cycle and uncertainties in emission trends. We test that protocol with a database of 226 emission mitigation s…
Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World
Determining the credibility of commitments in international climate policy
The Paris Agreement on climate change aims to improve cooperation by allowing governments to set their own commitments. Its success hinges on whether governments and investors believe those national commitments. To assess credibility, we interrogate a large novel sample of climate policy elites with decades of experience and well-placed to evaluate whether nations’ policy pledges are aligned with what they are politically and administratively abl…
Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World
Climate policy models need to get real about people — here’s how
To achieve deep cuts in US emissions, state-driven policy is only slightly more expensive than nationally uniform policy
The surprisingly inexpensive cost of state-driven emission control strategies
Explaining successful and failed investments in U.S. carbon capture and storage using empirical and expert assessments
Most studies of deep decarbonization find that a diverse portfolio of low-carbon energy technologies will be required, including carbon capture and storage (CCS) that mitigates emissions from fossil fuel power plants and industrial sources. While many projects essential to commercializing the technology have been proposed, most (>80%) end in failure. Here we analyze the full universe of CCS projects attempted in the U.S. that have sufficient docu…
Allied Decoupling in an Era of US–China Strategic Competition
The turn towards an openly competitive relationship between the United States and China today carries acute consequences for U.S. policy toward North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea or ROK). The military and economic requirements of enacting such a policy of competition with China complicates U.S. policy with its ally South Korea, as it exacerbates three core dilemmas that the ROK contends …
James B. McSwain. Petroleum and Public Safety: Risk Management in the Gulf South, 1901–2015
James B. McSwain has written a definitive, deeply researched book on the history of urban petroleum regulation in the American South. In Petroleum and Public Safety: Risk Management in the Gulf South, 1901–2015, he uses four cities—Mobile, Houston, New Orleans, and Galveston—to show how industrial interests, machinations in city government, and public fear of conflagration have shaped not just regulation but also the whole petroleum industry. At …
The new geometry of climate governance
Air quality and climate benefits of long-distance electricity transmission in China
China is the world’s top carbon emitter and suffers from severe air pollution. It has recently made commitments to improve air quality and to peak its CO _2 emissions by 2030. We examine one strategy that can potentially address both issues—utilizing long-distance electricity transmission to bring renewable power to the polluted eastern provinces. Based on an integrated assessment using state-of-the-science atmospheric modeling and recent epidemi…
A retrospective analysis of funding and focus in US advanced fission innovation
Deep decarbonization of the global energy system will require large investments in energy innovation and the deployment of new technologies. While many studies have focused on the expenditure that will be needed, here we focus on how government has spent public sector resources on innovation for a key carbon-free technology: advanced nuclear. We focus on nuclear power because it has been contributing almost 20% of total US electric generation, an…
California’s Cap-and-Trade System: Diffusion and Lessons
This article investigates the roles of policy diffusion and policy learning in shaping the design of California’s cap-and-trade system. On the surface, it is very similar to other cap-and-trade programs, but in practice many detailed differences reflect active efforts by California policy-makers to avoid flaws that they saw in other systems, such as the EU ETS and the US East Coast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We assess how California’s …
No False Promises: How the Prospect of Non-Compliance Affects Elite Preferences for International Cooperation
Why would leaders engage in international cooperation if they believe that their own government might default from their commitments? Some suggest that when leaders do so, they are essentially trying to profit from false promises—from making international commitments that they likely cannot, or will not, actually fulfill. In contrast, others expect that fears of such non-compliance will deter leaders from engaging in international cooperation. Mo…
The Behavioral Revolution and International Relations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Chapter 3. Science and Pathways for Bending the Curve
Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use are changing the radiative budget of the Earth and changing its climate. The negative impacts of this climate change on natural and human systems are already emergent. The solution is to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions altogether as soon as possible, but the rate at which these emissions can decrease is limited by human reliance on fossil fuels for energy and the infrastructural…
Chapter 1. Bending the Curve: Ten Scalable Solutions for Carbon Neutrality and Climate Stability
We are living in a world of over seven billion people, with annual greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 50 billion tons a year and rising steadily. If continued unabated, the world is on target to warm by about 2 °C in less than 40 years, pushing the climate to a regime unlike any that has been witnessed in the last million years. Nonetheless, we still have time to avert such a catastrophic scenario, or delay its occurrence by several decade…
What the Framework Convention on Climate Change Teaches Us About Cooperation on Climate Change
Arild Underdal has been at the center of an important community of scholars studying global environmental governance. Since the 1990s that community, along with many other scholars globally, has offered important insights into the design and management of international institutions that can lead to more effective management of environmental problems. At the same time, diplomats have made multiple attempts to create institutions to manage the dang…
The Regime Complex for Climate Change
There is no integrated regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely-coupled set of specific regimes. We describe the regime complex for climate change and seek to explain it, using interest-based, functional, and organizational arguments. This institutional form is likely to persist; efforts to build a comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed, but experiments abound with narrowe…
The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources
This article examines the implications of the rising density of international institutions. Despite the rapid proliferation of institutions, scholars continue to embrace the assumption that individual regimes are decomposable from others. We contend that an increasingly common phenomenon is the "regime complex:" a collective of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical regimes. The evolution of regime complexes reflects the influence of legalizat…
The Cognitive Revolution and the Political Psychology of Elite Decision Making
Experimental evidence in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics is transforming the way political science scholars think about how humans make decisions in areas of high complexity, uncertainty, and risk. Nearly all those studies utilize convenience samples of university students, but in the real world political elites actually make most pivotal political decisions such as threatening war or changing the course of economic policy. Highly e…
The Behavioral Revolution and International Relations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Decision Maker Preferences for International Legal Cooperation
Why do some decision makers prefer big multilateral agreements while others prefer cooperation in small clubs? Does enforcement encourage or deter institutional cooperation? We use experiments drawn from behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—along with a substantive survey focused on international trade—to illustrate how two behavioral traits (patience and strategic reasoning) of individuals who play key roles in negotiating and ratifying…
Abandonment, Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea
For decades, area specialists have argued that international relations (IR) theory cannot adequately explain security dynamics in East Asia as a result of cultures, histories, and traditions distinct from the West. A shining anomaly put forth in this regard is the relationship between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK). Why have these two powers had such volatile relations, despite their élite ties, economic complementarities, and shared secur…
Political Science Research on International Law: The State of the Field
The discipline of political science has developed an active research program on the development, operation, spread, and impact of international legal norms, agreements, and institutions. Meanwhile, a growing number of public international lawyers have developed an interest in political science research and methods. For more than two decades, scholars have been calling for international lawyers and political scientists to collaborate, and have sug…
Scientific Elites and the Making of US Policy for Climate Change Research, 1957-74
This paper presents a case study of the role of scientific élites in mediating between science and politics, securing support for research and shaping the interests of the rank and file. We apply a `garbage can' model, which posits that science, policy and politics typically evolve in separate, unconnected streams, each with its own momentum. In this model, élites may act strategically as `policy entrepreneurs' to take advantage of occasional tem…
Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia
In East Asia the United States cultivated a “hub and spokes” system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from the multilateral security alliances it preferred in Europe. Bilateralism emerged in East Asia as the dominant security structure because of the “powerplay” rationale behind U.S. postwar planning in the region. “Powerplay” refers to the construction of an …
Toward Effective International Cooperation on Climate Change: Numbers, Interests and Institutions
Arild Underdal's “law of the least ambitious program” is properly pessimistic about the prospects for cooperation in the international system where nations must give their consent to be bound by meaningful commitments. Those pessimistic expectations are now being revealed in the collective efforts to address the problem of climate change, notably through the Kyoto Protocol. Over-coming Underdal's law requires narrowing the numbers of countries th…
Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History
Journal Article Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History Get access Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History by Bruce Cumings. New York, W.W. Norton, 1997. 448 pp. Cloth $35.00; paper, $17.95. Victor D. Cha Victor D. Cha Georgetown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 113, Issue 3, Fall 1998, Pages 545–547, https://doi.org/10.2307/2658105 Published: 15 February…
No False Promises: How the Prospect of Non-Compliance Affects Elite Preferences for International Cooperation
Why would leaders engage in international cooperation if they believe that their own government might default from their commitments? Some suggest that when leaders do so, they are essentially trying to profit from false promises—from making international commitments that they likely cannot, or will not, actually fulfill. In contrast, others expect that fears of such non-compliance will deter leaders from engaging in international cooperation. Mo…
The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming
Predictability Versus Flexibility: Secrecy in International Investment Arbitration
There is heated debate over the wisdom and effect of secrecy in international negotiations. This debate has become central to the process of foreign investment arbitration because parties to disputes nearly always can choose to hide arbitral outcomes from public view. Working with a new database of disputes at the world's largest investor-state arbitral institution, the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the …
America’s Asian Alliances
Journal Article America’s Asian Alliances Get access America’s Asian Alliances by Robert D. Blackwill and Paul Dibb. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2000. 143 pp. Paper, $17.95. Victor D. Cha Victor D. Cha Georgetown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 116, Issue 4, Winter 2001, Pages 654–656, https://doi.org/10.2307/798235 Published: 15 February 2013
How Activists Perceive the Utility of International Law
A Theory of Sport and Politics
The study of international relations purports to explain how nation-states and individuals interact around the globe. Yet one major area of such interaction – international sport – remains exceedingly understudied. This in spite of the fact that countries have gone to war over sport, fought for sovereign recognition through sport, and that citizens around the world have it as a daily part of their lives. Indeed it is astounding that a phenomenon …
Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula
International Security - Volume 27, Number 1, Summer 2002
Hate, Power, and Identity in Japan–Korea Security: Towards a Synthetic Material-Ideational Analytical Framework
(2000). Hate, Power, and Identity in Japan–Korea Security: Towards a Synthetic Material-Ideational Analytical Framework. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 309-323
California’s Cap-and-Trade System: Diffusion and Lessons
This article investigates the roles of policy diffusion and policy learning in shaping the design of California’s cap-and-trade system. On the surface, it is very similar to other cap-and-trade programs, but in practice many detailed differences reflect active efforts by California policy-makers to avoid flaws that they saw in other systems, such as the EU ETS and the US East Coast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We assess how California’s …
What the Framework Convention on Climate Change Teaches Us About Cooperation on Climate Change
Arild Underdal has been at the center of an important community of scholars studying global environmental governance. Since the 1990s that community, along with many other scholars globally, has offered important insights into the design and management of international institutions that can lead to more effective management of environmental problems. At the same time, diplomats have made multiple attempts to create institutions to manage the dang…
Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea
The Transnational Politics of Energy
Creating effective energy policy is hard, in part because it often requires effective international coordination. For most salient energy-related issues – such as control of the emissions that cause global climate change or the building of stockpiles to make oil supplies more secure – international coordination is inherently difficult. Solutions lie in making these problems more manageable by working in small groups of relevant countries; success…
Limits of market-based strategies for slowing global warming: The case of tradeable permits
Allied Decoupling in an Era of US–China Strategic Competition
The turn towards an openly competitive relationship between the United States and China today carries acute consequences for U.S. policy toward North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea or ROK). The military and economic requirements of enacting such a policy of competition with China complicates U.S. policy with its ally South Korea, as it exacerbates three core dilemmas that the ROK contends …
Limits of market-based strategies for slowing global warming: The case of tradeable permits
Scientific Elites and the Making of US Policy for Climate Change Research, 1957-74
This paper presents a case study of the role of scientific élites in mediating between science and politics, securing support for research and shaping the interests of the rank and file. We apply a `garbage can' model, which posits that science, policy and politics typically evolve in separate, unconnected streams, each with its own momentum. In this model, élites may act strategically as `policy entrepreneurs' to take advantage of occasional tem…
Is There Still a Rational North Korean Option for War
Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History
Journal Article Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History Get access Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History by Bruce Cumings. New York, W.W. Norton, 1997. 448 pp. Cloth $35.00; paper, $17.95. Victor D. Cha Victor D. Cha Georgetown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 113, Issue 3, Fall 1998, Pages 545–547, https://doi.org/10.2307/2658105 Published: 15 February…
Dynamics of energy technologies and global change
The Rationale for "Enhanced" Engagement of North Korea: After the Perry Policy Review
Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea
Japan's Grand Strategy on the Korean Peninsula: Optimistic Realism
Korea is one of the most complex, critical, and yet understudied of Japan's foreign policy relationships. While much attention in US policy and academic circles has focused on Japan's future relations with China as the key variable for regional stability in the twenty first century, an integral part of the security dynamic in East Asia has been driven by the Japan–Korea axis. In the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century, two major p…
Hate, Power, and Identity in Japan–Korea Security: Towards a Synthetic Material-Ideational Analytical Framework
(2000). Hate, Power, and Identity in Japan–Korea Security: Towards a Synthetic Material-Ideational Analytical Framework. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 309-323
The continuity behind the change in Korea
Abandonment, Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea
For decades, area specialists have argued that international relations (IR) theory cannot adequately explain security dynamics in East Asia as a result of cultures, histories, and traditions distinct from the West. A shining anomaly put forth in this regard is the relationship between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK). Why have these two powers had such volatile relations, despite their élite ties, economic complementarities, and shared secur…
Restoring the Forests
Eight thousand years ago, when humans played only bit parts in the world ecosystem, trees covered two-fifths of the land. Since then, humans have grown in number while thinning and shaving the forests to cook, keep warm, grow crops, plank ships, frame houses, and make paper. Fires, saws, and axes have cleared about half of the original forestland, and some analysts warn that within decades, the remaining natural forests will disappear altogether.…
Balance, Parallelism, and Asymmetry: United States-Korea Relations
The George W. Bush presidency has raised wide speculation about future United States' policy toward the Korean peninsula. The conventional wisdom among pundits in Washington, Seoul and elsewhere is that the incoming administration will switch to a ‘harder line’ regarding the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) and move away from the engagement policy practiced during the Clinton administration. In a similar vein, others have argued that …
The second nuclear age: Proliferation pessimism versus sober optimism in South Asia and East Asia
Strategic Culture and the Military Modernization of South Korea
Two schools of thought in international relations theory have sought to explain the accelerated pace of arms acquisitions in Asia. The "arms" school posits that weapons purchases are a function of emerging peer competition. Countering this view, the "affluence" argument focuses on economics and status-hierarchy factors as the proximate cause for the buildup. This article tests these schools against the Republic of Korea (ROK) case, and finds both…
America’s Asian Alliances
Journal Article America’s Asian Alliances Get access America’s Asian Alliances by Robert D. Blackwill and Paul Dibb. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2000. 143 pp. Paper, $17.95. Victor D. Cha Victor D. Cha Georgetown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 116, Issue 4, Winter 2001, Pages 654–656, https://doi.org/10.2307/798235 Published: 15 February 2013
The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming
Alignment Despite Antagonism: The US-Korea-Japan Security Triangle
Focus on the future, not the north
The U.S.‐ROK alliance is slowly but steadily approaching a pivotal reassessment. It is time to stop thinking about the alliance in ad hoc terms and start creating the vision for the future U.S. presence in Northeast Asia generally and in Korea specifically
Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula
International Security - Volume 27, Number 1, Summer 2002
Farming the Genetic Frontier
FOR MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND YEARS, farmers have improved their crops by letting nature do the breeding and then choosing the tastiest, hardiest, or most productive offspring. This ancient technique was accelerated in the last century through more systematic attempts to oversee the breeding and selection process. Today, however, new scientific techniques are making it possible to design crops with far greater precision and effect than ever before. …
Axis of Oil
Shaping change in the alliance
The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources
This article examines the implications of the rising density of international institutions. Despite the rapid proliferation of institutions, scholars continue to embrace the assumption that individual regimes are decomposable from others. We contend that an increasingly common phenomenon is the "regime complex:" a collective of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical regimes. The evolution of regime complexes reflects the influence of legalizat…
Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies
Introduction: The Debate over North KoreaVictor Cha: Weak but Still ThreateningDavid Kang: Threatening, but Deterrence WorksResponse: Why we must pursue hawk engagement (Cha)Response: Why are we so afraid of engagement? (Kang)Crisis Redux: The 2003 Nuclear CrisisBeyond Hyperbole, Toward a Strategy
Political science (51 works) · Economics (38 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (29 works) · Politics (26 works) · Climate change (20 works) · Business (19 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Climate Change Policy and Economics (18 works) · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies (16 works)