Peter Cowhey

Peter Cowhey is Dean Emeritus and Qualcomm Professor of Communications and Technology Policy Emeritus at the School of Global Policy and Strategy. He is also the former director of the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and has held several senior leadership positions at UC San Diego. He currently serves as a senior fellow at UC San Diego’s Cowhey Center on Global Transformation and at IGCC. His scholarship covers the international political economy of trade and investment issues, technology policy and the politics of American foreign policy decision-making.

Cowhey served as a senior government official for technology and trade issues in the Clinton and Obama administrations. In the Clinton administration, he led international policy for the Federal Communications Commission as it reset competition rules in the global telecommunications market to align with the emerging internet era, leading a sweeping World Trade Organization agreement in 1997. In the Obama administration, he served as senior counselor to the U.S. Trade Representative, with a special emphasis on forging new trade initiatives ranging from technology markets to global service industries and expanding trade opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. He also served as the U.S. co-chair of the binational U.S.-China Joint Commission on Innovation Policy.

Cowhey is currently a member of the U.S. Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, the U.S. advisory group to APEC. He has also chaired bipartisan working groups on U.S. technology policy regarding China's growing capabilities and U.S. regulation of Chinese investment. In the nonprofit sector, he serves as vice chair of the board of the San Diego Natural History Museum and is chair emeritus of the boards of the California Council on Science and Technology and Grameen Foundation USA.

Education and CV

Ph.D., Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1977
M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1971
B.S.F.S., Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1970
CV

GPS Spotlight

Publications of Note

“Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation,” (with J. Aronson and D. Abelson), MIT Press (2009).

Cowhey, Peter F. and John Richards. "Building Global Service Markets: Economic Structure and State Capacity." The State after Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization. Ed. Jonah D. Levy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2006. 301-39.

“When Countries Talk: Global Telecommunication for the 1990s,” (with J. Aronson), a book for the international trade project of the American Enterprise Institute (Ballinger, 1988).

“The Problems of Plenty: Energy Policy and International Politics,” University of California Press (1984).

“Structure and Policy in Japan and the United States: An Institutionalist Approach,” (co-edited with Mathew McCubbins) Cambridge University Press (1995) (reprinted in 1997). 

Recent Publications and Activities

Cowhey, Peter. "2050: Is Free Trade Dead and Buried? Managing the Global Knowledge Economy." Strategic Foresight: A New Start for the European Union, edited by Gerard Pogorel and Ricardo Silvestre, European Liberal Forum, 2026.

Cowhey, Peter, and Meg Rithmire. "The Cost of Keeping China Out." Foreign Affairs, Aug. 17, 2026.

Conn, Robert, Peter Cowhey, Josh Graff Zivin, and Christopher Martin. "Science Philanthropy and Implications for American Policy and Leadership." Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2025.

Cowhey, Peter. "The International Political Economy of the Regulation of Digital Technology." IGCC Report, 2025.

“Digital Trade and Regulation in an Age of Disruption,” October 2018, UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs (with J. Aronson).

Baranga, Thomas and Peter Cowhey, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Trade’s Prosperous Potential for San Diego,” March 13, 2016. San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation [Executive Summary] June 2016.

Market Assessment Developed by UC San Diego Students Positions Region to Boost Exports. UC San Diego News. May 15, 2013.

The Resurgence of Manufacturing in the United States. UCSD-TV. April 22, 2013.

Cowhey, Peter F., and Michael Kleeman, "Unlocking the Benefits of Cloud Computing for Emerging Economies—A Policy Overview", UC San Diego, October 2012.

Clouded Futures and Sovereign Sunshines Designing Geopolitics 2: 2nd Annual Conference at the Center of Design and Geopolitics. June 2, 2012.

China Airborne: Aviation and the Future of China with James Fallows and Peter Cowhey. Helen Edison Lecture Series. June 11, 2012. UCSD-TV.

Breznitz, Dan and Peter Cowhey. "America's Two Systems of Innovation: Recommendations for Policy Changes to Support Innovation, Production and Job Creation," Innovation, Production, and Sustainable Job Creation: Reviving U.S. Prosperity. CONNECT Innovation Institute, [White Papers] February 2012.

Breznitz, Dan and Peter Cowhey. "America's Two Systems of Innovation: Recommendations for Policy Changes to Support Innovation, Production and Job Creation," Innovation, Production, and Sustainable Job Creation: Reviving U.S. Prosperity. CONNECT Innovation Institute, [Executive Summary] February 2012.

“Network Theory and Internet Governance,” in Miles Kahler (ed.), Networked Politics (Cornell University Press, 2009) (with Milton Mueller).

“Political Economy and Technological Architectures: The Political Economy of the U.S. Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure,”  November 2008, Journal of Policy Research (with J. Aronson and J. Richards).

“The Peculiar Evolution of 3G Wireless Networks: Institutional Logic, Politics, and Property Rights” in William Drake and Ernst Wilson (eds.), Governing Global Electronic Networks (Social Science Research Council and MIT Press, 2009) (with J. Aronson and J. Richards).

“Access and Innovation Policy for the Third-Generation Internet,” Telecommunications Policy, 24 (July/August 2000)  (with  F. Bar, S. Cohen, B. de Long, M. Kleeman, and J. Zysman).

“Digital DNA: Disruption and the Challenges for Global Governance” 
Peter Cowhey and Jonathan D. Aronson (University of Southern California), Oxford University Press (2017)

"Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation"
Peter Cowhey and Jonathan D. Aronson (University of Southern California), (with Donald Abelson), MIT Press (2009)