Ryan Pike

Ryan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Economy and Society Initiative at UC Berkeley, working in the Climate and Green Industrial Strategy team. He received his PhD in political science from Yale University in 2026. His research interests lie in the comparative and international political economy of climate change. Two overarching questions guide his research: First, how does climate change and policy reshape democratic politics? And, second, how do states and business bargain over the politics of economic transformation? His dissertation studied how production site agglomeration shapes the politics and policy of industrial decarbonization in terms of firm lobbying, firm collaboration on infrastructure, and the local electoral consequences of green investment. A core insight from this research is that climate politics, especially industrial decarbonization, is structured by geography: firms operating in dense areas of industrial production behave differently from their more isolated peers. Individuals in the industrial heartland, moreover, react in a different fashion to state-led green investment compared to elsewhere, rewarding incumbents. His research has been published or is forthcoming at Government and Opposition, and World Politics.