Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), with a secondary appointment in the Environmental Studies Program. I am also a Faculty Research Fellow at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, a Center Scholar at the Center for the Environment, and a Fellow at the Governance and Local Development Institute at the University of Gothenburg. Previously, I held a National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution (2021–2022) and served as the Lead of the China Energy Program at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (2022–2025).
My research examines the political foundations of governing capacity: how institutions and incentives shape whether governments deliver on climate, energy, and environmental goals. China is central to this agenda, and a growing body of comparative work on the United States examines how the same mechanisms operate under different institutional arrangements. Across these settings, I study policy implementation, government responsiveness, and the politics of public protection. I combine methods and insights from political science, public policy, and environmental science, and connect research with practice through policy briefs and reports and by convening scholars and policymakers for U.S.–China climate dialogues.
My first book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China (Cambridge University Press, 2022), explains how officials’ career incentives systematically shape environmental enforcement. The dissertation on which it is based received the 2020 American Political Science Association Harold D. Lasswell Award and the 2019 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Ph.D. Dissertation Award. An early paper from the project received the 2017 American Political Science Association Paul A. Sabatier Award and the 2018 Southern Political Science Association Malcolm Jewell Award. The work also contributed to the record recognized by the 2023 International Public Policy Association Early Career Research Award.
My current book project, Climate Claims: How Citizens and Bureaucracies Make Adaptation Politics in China, asks how experiences of climate harm become demands on government, and how bureaucracies respond. A complementary book, Compliance with Public Policy, co-authored with Anat Gofen and R. Kent Weaver and under contract with Cambridge University Press in its Elements Series in Public Policy, examines the broader challenge of securing compliance with public policy.
My articles are published or forthcoming in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Annual Review of Political Science, Policy Studies Journal, and journals within the Nature Portfolio. My co-authored PNAS article received the 2025 American Political Science Association Evan Ringquist Award. The 2025 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance recognized three core concepts from my empirical research: the political regulation wave, social competition, and regularized campaigns.
I hold a Ph.D. in political science and an M.S. in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University, where I was the first student to complete that combination, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College, where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with High Honors.
You can find me on X (@svictoriashen) and Bluesky (@svshen.bsky.social). If you are interested in working with me as a Ph.D. student, please consult the Ph.D. Admissions page.
In fall 2026, I teach an undergraduate lecture, POLSCI 3286, “The Global Politics of Climate Change.” In spring 2027, I will teach POLSCI 4043, “Public Policy Analysis, Assessment and Practical Wisdom,” and ENST 4540, “The Global Politics of Climate Adaptation.”
Recent Updates
09/2026: Blog post, “Beyond One-Off Crackdowns: How Regularized Campaigns Can Sustain Compliance,” is published in PSJ Blog.
07/2026: Participates in Stanford CASBS Institute on AI Methods for Social Scientists (AIMS).
06/2026: Joins the Editorial Advisory Board of Environmental Politics journal.
05/2026: Receives the 2026 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).
03/2026: Book review of Clean Air at What Cost? The Rise of Blunt Force Regulation in China is published in The China Journal.
02/2026: Podcast with America Adapts is published.
01/2026: Quoted in “How is the Chinese public engaging in climate adaptation?” Dialogue Earth. January 8, 2026.
12/2025: Interview with the Governance and Local Development Institute is published.
12/2025: Feature story by Stanford University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is published.
11/2025: Receives the 2025 World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management for “research that assesses pathways to achieve measurable but as-yet unrealized gains in overall environmental performance.”
Also featured in Washington University’s newspaper, The Record.
11/2025: Policy brief, “Incorporating Citizens’ Voices into Climate Change Adaptation Plans: Lessons from China,” is published by the Governance and Local Development Institute.
10/2025: Policy brief, “Regularized Campaigns: Solving Principal-Agent Problems and Sustaining Compliance,” is published by the Governance and Local Development Institute.
09/2025: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Social competition drives collective action to reduce informal waste burning in Uganda,” receives the Evan Ringquist Best Paper Award from the American Political Science Association for “the best science, technology, and environmental politics paper published in a relevant journal” in 2023 or 2024.
09/2025: Peer-reviewed journal article, “The 2021 Henan flood increased citizen demand for government-led climate change adaptation in China,” is published in Nature Portfolio’s Communications Earth & Environment.
07/2025: Quoted in “‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis?” The Guardian. July 18, 2025.
07/2025: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Regularized Campaigns as a New Institution for Effective Governance,” is published in Policy Studies Journal.
Older Updates04/2025: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Governing policy experiments in Chinese cities: Lessons on effective climate mitigation,” is published in Policy Studies Journal.
11/2024: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Can Autocracy Handle Climate Change?,” is published in PS: Political Science & Politics.
10/2024: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Political will as a source of policy innovation,” is published in Policy Studies Journal.
05/2024: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Social competition drives collective action to reduce informal waste burning in Uganda,” is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. View the associated VoxDev article. View AirQo’s coverage in this blog post.
06/2023: Receives the Early Career Research Award from the International Public Policy Association, given biennially to “a scholar who, within seven years of completing the PhD, has a record of single-authored publications that represents a major theoretical, methodological, and/or empirical contribution to the field of Public Policy and/or Public Administration.”
10/2022: Paperback version, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China, is published by Cambridge University Press. Watch the recorded livestream of book presentation and discussion here.
04/2022: Op-ed, “Next steps in US-China climate cooperation,” is published in The Hill.
03/2022: Book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China, is published by Cambridge University Press.
12/2021: Report, “Accelerating Decarbonization in China and the United States and Promoting Bilateral Collaboration on Climate Change,” is published by Stanford University Precourt Institute for Energy. View press release.
11/2021: Editor-invited journal article, “Deregulation Is Not the Enemy: It Can Be Good for the Economy—and the Environment Too,” is published in the Breakthrough Journal (commissioned by the Breakthrough Institute).
05/2020: Peer-reviewed journal article, “Environmental Justice in India: Incidence of Air Pollution from Coal-Fired Power Plants,” is published in Ecological Economics.