DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Interests

Research Interest(s): autocracy, democracy, environment, climate, populism, nationalism, methods

Program Area(s): Methods; Comparative Politics

Regional Specialization(s): Europe; Asia

Subfield Specialties: Comparative Historical Analysis; Law and Politics; Public Opinion, Political Communication, and Political Participation

Biography

Ding's research explores the discontents of modernity, with a focus on the environment, climate change, populism, nationalism, and ideology. She is the author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China (Cornell University Press, 2022), and regularly conducts field research in Asia and Europe. Her public writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Ideas Letter, New Lines Magazine, and Break—Down, among other outlets.

Publications

• 
  Iza Ding and Denise van der Kamp. 2024. “How Policy Shapes Politics: Uneven Environmental Policy Implementation in China.” Journal of Contemporary China 34(155): 743-758.
• Graham Beattie, Iza Ding, Andrea La Nauze. 2022. “Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap in China? Evidence from an Information Experiment.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 115: 102713.
• Iza Ding. 2022. The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China. Cornell University Press.
• Iza Ding and Michael Thompson-Brusstar. 2021. “The Anti-Bureaucratic Ghost in China’s Bureaucratic Machine.” China Quarterly 248(S1): 116-140.
• Iza Ding, Dan Slater, and Huseyin Zengin. 2021. “Populism and the Past: Restoring, Redeeming, and Retaining the Nation.” Studies in Comparative International Development 56(2): 148-169.
• Iza Ding and Jeffrey Javed. 2021. “The Autocrat’s Moral-Legal Dilemma: Popular Morality and Legal Institutions in China.” Comparative Political Studies 54(6): 989-1022.
• Iza Ding and Dan Slater. 2021. “Democratic Decoupling.” Democratization 28(1): 63-80. Iza Ding. 2020. “Performative Governance.” World Politics 72(4): 525-56.

Awards

• Berlin Prize, 2024
• APSA Virginia M. Walsh Award for the best dissertation in the field of Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics, 2017
• APSA Best Dissertation Award in Urban and Local Politics, 2017
• Hopwood Award (non-fiction), 2008

Public engagement  

• “An Accidental Climate Revolution,” Break—Down, 7 September 2026. 
• “Studying is Harmful: China Sits the Gaokao” London Review of Books, 5 February 2026. 
• "Goodbye, Gibbon," the Ideas Letter, 14 November 2024.
• "Can China Lead the Fight on Climate Change?" The Diplomat, December 1, 2019.