Guoer Liu

Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. I study how automated systems reshape governance—how measurement rules and information infrastructures structure political authority and public belief. My research sits at the intersection of political institutions, technology, and environmental politics, with a primary empirical focus on China. I also work on political methodology, focusing on causal inference and survey experiments.

My book project shows that automation is not just a technical upgrade but a political institution. Using China’s automated air-quality monitoring system as the central case, the book demonstrates how automation produces information that is not necessarily more accurate, but credibly biased—consistent enough to govern with and informative enough to be believed.