David Lake

David A. Lake is the Jerri-Ann and Gary E. Jacobs Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego. He has published widely in international relations theory and international political economy. The Statebuilder’s Dilemma: On the Limits of External Intervention (2016). In addition to nearly 100 scholarly articles and chapters, he is the author of Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of US Commercial Strategy, 1887–1939 (1988), Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in its Century (1999), and Hierarchy in International Relations (2009). He has also co-edited 12 volumes on a variety of topics in international political economy, security studies, and international organizations. He is co-author of a comprehensive textbook on World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions (3rd ed. 2016).

Lake served as president of the American Political Science Association in 2016–2017. He has served as research director for international relations at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (1992‒1996 and 2000‒2001), co-editor of the journal International Organization (1997‒2001), chair of the Political Science department (2000‒2004), and associate dean of social sciences at UC San Diego (2006‒2015). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006 and was a 2008–2009 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1984 and taught at UCLA from 1983 to 1992.