Sojun Park

My paper, "The Political Economy of Compulsory Licensing: Democracy and Regulatory Threat in Public Health," has been accepted at Public Choice! It shows why foreign drug companies voluntarily licensed their AIDS patents in democracies during the AIDS crisis. 1/N

My research agenda on trade and intellectual property was featured in a recent MIT newsletter interview. I am truly grateful to @MIT_CIS for the opportunity to expand my research into both AI and green technology! news.mit.edu/2026/sojun-par…

Attending #ISA2026? Check out our ongoing research (with @Sayumi_Miyano) on the determinants of WTO observer status for IOs, to be presented tomorrow! We study how geopolitical alignments among IO members shape WTO observer status decisions and information exchange between IOs.

This Guardian map suggests that Europe and others have started to vote more with China. A more careful look shows that the U.S. has changed; not the rest of the world. U.S. voting behavior has become so extreme that it practically breaks the scale of UN ideal point estimates.

Join us for the Political Economy of International Organization Conference (@The_PEIO) at the University of Texas at Austin, January 7-9, 2027. Submission is now open at peio.me. Thanks Terry Chapman, Dan Nielson, @goodhouses, @NateMJensen for hosting!

Happy to present my work in progress on the politics of AI technology diffusion at @MIT_CIS ! In this talk, I show that distributive trade conflicts between allies lead to AI technology spillovers across enemy lines.

Here's proof that Claude Code can write an entire empirical polisci paper. To validate my claim that AI agents are coming for polisci "like a freight train", today I had Claude Code fully replicate and extend an old paper of mine estimating the effect of universal vote-by-mail on turnout and election outcome...essentially in one shot. After careful prompting, Claude Code: (1) Downloaded the old paper's repo and replicated the past results, translating our old Stata Code into Python (2) Crawled the web to get updated official election data and census data (3) Ran new analyses extending the results through 2024 (4) Created new tables and figures (5) Performed a lit review (6) Wrote a wholly new paper (7) Pushed the whole thing to a new github repo The whole thing took about an hour. This is an insane paradigm shift in how empirical work is done. It also validates the point that several people including @BrendanNyhan made yesterday---it's going to be especially easy to scale observational research with AI. Thanks to @alexolegimas, @arthur_spirling , and many others who gave me feedback. .

Happy to share our article on transparency and the WTO Secretariat is now open access at @The_PEIO! Many thanks to @minjulisettekim for the great collaboration. Also check out the other articles forthcoming in the SI on Public Opinion and IOs by @JonasTallberg and Lisa Dellmuth.

@RIPEJournal We find that rapidly innovating U.S. exporters with shorter patent lifecycles demand lower tariffs and seek limits on patenting and regulatory delay. This finding highlights new directions for firm-level trade politics research on the U.S.–China technological rivalry. 3/3

Thrilled to share that my paper with Iain Osgood, Jieun Lee, and Sujin Cha is now available at @RIPEJournal and it’s open access! We examine how the rate of innovation shapes the politics of trade agreements and intellectual property enforcement. 1/3 doi.org/10.1080/096922…

@RIPEJournal We estimate the speed with which existing products become obsolete using U.S. patent citation lags and combine these with data on U.S. public support for trade agreements and ITC adjudications of patent infringement through Section 337 investigations. 2/3

@ginopauselli @IllinoisPolSci @APSAtweets @PoliticsAtPenn Many congrats, Gino! So well deserved.

Thrilled about this dissertation award! So thankful for my committee members (all of them twitterless).

As the US steps back from leading in global governance institutions, China has increasingly stepped into leadership roles, serving as head of WHO, FAO, and other important UN agencies in recent years. In new (open access!) work with @rachelhulvey in @The_PEIO, we ask: why? 1/5

@leng_ning @CambridgeUP Many congrats Ning! Can't wait to read it

My new book, *Politicizing Business*, releases today @CambridgeUP! Central theme: in China’s political economy, the Party-state systematically enlists businesses to serve its political needs and those of its officials. The politicization of business is rooted in authoritarianism and often follows sectoral patterns. A🧵 amazon.com/Politicizing-B…

How do states’ geopolitical alignments shape the design and functioning of IOs and economic interdependence? How do IOs respond? Join our #APSA2025 panel in Vancouver, where scholars present new data and insights on the geopolitics–IO nexus!

How do countries mitigate the political costs of being accused of violating international law? In a new article in @apsrjournal, Tyler Pratt and I show that denying facts and challenging the applicability of law are effective strategies. IOs can counter-message though! (1 of 2)

Excited to share that my article on the political economy of compulsory licensing is now available online at Public Choice! Grateful to the reviewers and editors for their thoughtful feedback.

Coming to Seoul for #IPSA2025? Check out this panel next Tuesday! We bring together scholars from around the world using South Korean datasets to explore various IPE topics, including trade, global value chain, diplomacy, and automation.

@jacq__park @PUPolitics @NiehausCenter @MIT_CIS @LKYSch Thank you Jihye!

@SojunPark2 @PUPolitics @NiehausCenter @MIT_CIS @LKYSch Congrats!

Ph.Done! Truly grateful to my colleagues and mentors at @PUPolitics and @NiehausCenter for their support throughout this journey. Looking forward to starting the next chapters at @MIT_CIS and @LKYSch.

@minjulisettekim @PUPolitics @NiehausCenter @MIT_CIS @LKYSch Thank you Minju!

@SojunPark2 @PUPolitics @NiehausCenter @MIT_CIS @LKYSch Massive congratulations!!

@Handi_Rita_Li @World_Pol Congratulations!

After five years from the first draft, my job market paper is finally forthcoming @World_Pol. I greatly appreciate all who helped and commented. I hope it offers something to those interested in transparency, institution development, authoritarianism, or contentious politics.