Yena Kim

Welcome!

I am Yena Kim, a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and incoming Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center.

My research examines the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy—how domestic political conditions shape state behavior abroad, and how foreign policy in turn reverberates at home—particularly in the domain of international cooperation and conflict.

My dissertation, Populist Leaders in Power and International Cooperation, asks why and when populist leaders in democracies undermine international cooperation and pursue more conflictual foreign policy, and how democratic cooperation partners respond to populist accession in counterpart countries. I argue that the strength of domestic populist demand moderates both relationships—shaping when populists' political incentives translate into distinctive international behavior, and conditioning whether partner countries interpret populist accession as a credible signal of institutional decay. I test this theory using a multi-method strategy combining cross-national observational analyses, event-study designs, survey experiments, and qualitative case studies.

Before pursuing my Ph.D., I earned a B.A. (Highest Honors) in Political Science and Russian Language and Literature and an M.A. in Political Science from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Please feel free to reach out at yena.kim@wisc.edu.