About

Tyler Jost is an assistant professor of political science and the Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on international security and Chinese foreign policy, with a particular interest in how bureaucracy and regimes shape international politics. His first book, Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation, explores how institutions connecting leaders to their foreign policy bureaucracies affect the risk of miscalculation when states are deciding between war and peace. This book won several awards, including the International Studies Association Asia-Pacific Distinguished Book Award, the Edgar S. Furniss Book Award from the Mershon Center for International Security, as well as the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award and the Herbert A. Simon Book Award from the American Political Science Association. His research has been featured in outlets such as Foreign Affairs and the Pekingology podcast. His second book project, The Rise and Fall of Major Power Cooperation, examines how threats to international and domestic regimes shape cooperation between major powers, such as the United States and China. Jost's other research investigates promotion, intelligence collection, and attitudes inside foreign policy bureaucracies in China and the United States, as well as how these bureaucracies affect foreign policy decision-making, international communication, and arming. His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, The China Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Jost received his PhD in political science from Harvard University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Belfer Center International Security Program and the Harvard-Columbia China and the World Program. From 2023 to 2024, he was the David and Cindy Edelson Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College. He is currently a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. In March 2023, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Economics
• History
• Positive economics
• Applied psychology
• Public administration
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• : <i>Upstart: How China Became a Great Power</i>

  The China Journal · 2026-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Politics of Promotion in China’s Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

  The China Quarterly · 2025-06-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract A robust literature on the professional advancement of Chinese officials has paid comparatively little attention to an important elite group: the foreign policy bureaucracy. We introduce original data documenting over 11,000 career assignments of 1,357 senior officials in the foreign ministry from 1949 to 2023 and leverage these data to offer the first systematic analysis of who rises to the top of China’s foreign affairs system. We find that diplomats who spend a greater share of their careers in postings abroad are less likely to be promoted to higher ranks than diplomats who remain at home – and that these patterns persisted even after the professionalization of the foreign affairs bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the analysis finds only mixed evidence that diplomatic performance assists promotion. The data and analysis draw attention to the unique challenges of professional advancement in bureaucracies charged with managing China’s foreign relations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decision by Design: Leaders, Bureaucracies, and International Crisis Performance

  International Studies Quarterly · 2025-09-11

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract When do leaders initiate international crises in which they fail to achieve their goals? I argue that poor crisis performance is more likely when a state’s bureaucracy provides incomplete or inaccurate information to leaders. Two characteristics of a state’s national security institutions—capacity for information search and interbureaucratic information sharing—shape the quality of information provision. Leaders are thus less likely to initiate international crises that fail to advance their goals when they sit atop institutions that ease transaction costs of relaying information to leaders and that allow bureaucracies to competitively evaluate each other’s information. To test my argument, I leverage data measuring bureaucratic institutions across the globe from 1946 to 2015. The analysis finds that crisis performance depends on institutional design, suggesting that some leaders are more prone that others to exhibit poor judgment in high-stakes international crises because of institutional constraints on their information. A case study on China’s decision-making prior to the Sino-Vietnamese War illustrates the theory’s mechanisms. Collectively, the theory and findings improve our understanding of how bureaucracy shapes international conflict.

  PublisherDOI

• Networks of coercion: Military ties and civilian leadership challenges in China

  American Journal of Political Science · 2025-04-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Civilian‐led coups are one of the most common routes to losing power in autocracies. How do authoritarian leaders secure themselves from civilian leadership challenges? We argue that autocrats differentiate civilian rivals in part by their social ties to the military. To reduce the threat of coups, leaders buy off civilians with strong military ties by promoting them to lower‐tier institutions—but isolate these same civilians by denying them promotion to higher‐tier institutions that afford opportunities to challenge the leader. We introduce an original data set of over 117,000 postings of 34,140 Chinese military officers and map ties between the entire civilian and military elite between 1927 and 2014. We find that civilian leaders with strong ties to the military improve prospects for promotion to the Central Committee, but degrade the likelihood of promotion to the apex Politburo Standing Committee, particularly for civilians outside the leader's social network.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Advisors

  2025-08-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines how advisers shape international crises by supplying ideas that influence leaders' decisions. Leaders retain ultimate authority, but advisers actively filter information, frame options, and advocate policies that alter crisis trajectories. They exert influence through three mechanisms: offering counsel, controlling agendas, and applying political pressure. Historical cases like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iraq War demonstrate how advisers shape policy through expertise, credibility, and strategic maneuvering. While leaders depend on advisers for information and analysis, they also design decision-making processes to regulate advisers’ influence. Finally, the chapter underscores how advisers' ideological dispositions, organizational affiliations, and social environments shape their interpretations of global events and, in turn, the policies they promote.

  PublisherDOI

• Autocratic Institutions and Foreign Policy

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-02-22 · 6 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter discusses the study of foreign policy in authoritarian states. Traditionally, authoritarian foreign policy was studied through coarse comparisons between democratic and non-democratic regimes. A new wave of scholarship suggests that differences between authoritarian regimes can also shape patterns in foreign policy behavior. Some scholars emphasize political accountability – the ability to remove rulers when adopt foreign policies that deviate from elite or societal preferences. Other scholars instead emphasize the effectiveness of bureaucratic institutions responsible for advising foreign policy decisions and coordinating foreign policy implementation – and the institutional trade-offs that authoritarian rulers face between domestic political security and bureaucratic performance. Future scholarship can further advance the field though incorporating insights from emerging research on bureaucracy, comparative politics, and foreign policy analysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Advisers and Aggregation in Foreign Policy Decision Making

  International Organization · 2024 · 56 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public administration

  Abstract Do advisers affect foreign policy and, if so, how? Recent scholarship on elite decision making prioritizes leaders and the institutions that surround them, rather than the dispositions of advisers themselves. We argue that despite the hierarchical nature of foreign policy decision making, advisers’ predispositions regarding the use of force shape state behavior through the counsel advisers provide in deliberations. To test our argument, we introduce an original data set of 2,685 foreign policy deliberations between US presidents and their advisers from 1947 to 1988. Applying a novel machine learning approach to estimate the hawkishness of 1,134 Cold War–era foreign policy decision makers, we show that adviser-level hawkishness affects both the counsel that advisers provide in deliberations and the decisions leaders make: conflictual policy choices grow more likely as hawks increasingly dominate the debate, even when accounting for leader dispositions. The theory and findings enrich our understanding of international conflict by demonstrating how advisers’ dispositions, which aggregate through the counsel advisers provide, systematically shape foreign policy behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bureaucracy and Cyber Coercion

  International Studies Quarterly · 2023-12-28 · 4 citations

  article

  Abstract States are increasingly incorporating militarized cyber technologies, or cyber weapons, into their defense arsenals, but there is vigorous debate about their coercive utility. Existing scholarship often adjudicates the debate by parsing technical differences between cyber and conventional weapons. This technical approach overlooks a critical consideration: bureaucrats who inform state assessments may hold unique perspectives on coercion due to their organizational affiliation. We make an empirical intervention by fielding a survey experiment on bureaucrats inside US Cyber Command, offering a rare glimpse into elite perceptions. We find little evidence that technical differences between weapons yield systematically different assessments. Bureaucrats perceive that conventional and cyber weapons have statistically indistinguishable coercive utility and battlefield effects. Replicating the study on a public sample, we find that bureaucrats are more optimistic about coercion across all domains and their optimism stems from organizational culture, rather than parochial interests or technical expertise. The findings show how who is responsible for assessing a technology's coercive value can shape estimates even more than which technology is being assessed. Unique perspectives clustered within influential bureaucracies may shape state assessments and policies in ways that diverge from the expectations of analyses that emphasize technical characteristics of military capabilities.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Advisers and Aggregation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-09-15

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Data and code necessary to replicate the results of the article "Advisers and Aggregation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making" and its supplementary material.

  PublisherDOI

• Armies and Influence: Elite Experience and Public Opinion on Foreign Policy

  Journal of Conflict Resolution · 2023-09-28 · 32 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  When is the public more likely to defer to elites on foreign policy? Existing research suggests the public takes its cues from co-partisans, but what happens when co-partisans disagree? We argue that the public defers to elites whose prior experiences signal expertise and favorable intentions. Elites with backgrounds in socially esteemed institutions are thus especially powerful cue-givers, even when the core competencies of those institutions are not directly related to the issue at hand. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that the American public defers to more experienced elites generally, but is especially deferential toward elites with experience in trusted institutions: the public defers more to elites with military backgrounds, even when considering non-military issues. The theory and findings suggest that where elites sat in the past shapes how much power they wield once standing in office.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robert Schub

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  5 shared

• Joshua D. Kertzer

  4 shared

• Eric Min

  University of California, Los Angeles

  3 shared

• Kaine Meshkin

  United States Military Academy

  2 shared

• Heidi Brockmann Demarest

  American Military Academy

  2 shared

• Joshua Kertzer

  Harvard University Press

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Robert Jervis International Security Book Award
• Herbert A. Simon Book Award from the American Political Scie…
• Asia-Pacific Distinguished Book Award from the International…