- University of Notre Dame
- Associate Professor of Political Science
- Residential Fellow (2019-2020)
- “Coastal Homeowners in a Changing Climate”
Debra Javeline is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is a core faculty member of the Russian and East European Studies program and an affiliated faculty member of the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative. Her research interests include mass political behavior, survey research, Russian politics, sustainability, environmental politics, and climate change. She is currently exploring coastal homeowner motivations to take action to reduce their risk from rising seas, hurricanes, and other hazards.
Professor Javeline divides her time between the study of Russia and the study of global environmental problems, especially climate change. She is the author of Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages (2003), and her two current book projects are After Violence: The Beslan School Massacre and the Peace that Followed and Solutions: Science, Politics, and Saving the Planet. Her article publications include “The Most Important Topic Political Scientists are Not Studying: Adapting to Climate Change” in Perspectives on Politics (2014) and “Coastal Homeowners in a Changing Climate” in Climatic Change (2019). She is collaborating with engineers on “Coastal Homeownership in a Changing Climate: A Study of Risk Awareness, Risk Reduction, and Resilience,” funded by the National Science Foundation and Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative. With scholars of environmental governance, she co-edited a special issue of Climatic Change on “Adapting to Water Impacts of Climate Change” (2019). With a former Notre Dame undergraduate and current biology Ph.D. student, she published a book chapter, “Adaptation of Ecosystems in the Anthropocene,” in Research Handbook on Climate Change Adaptation Policy (2019), and she continues to work on issues related to climate change and scientific opinion.
Professor Javeline has conducted survey research in the former Soviet Union for the U.S. Information Agency (now State Department) and the U.S. Agency for International Development. She has held fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, Mellon, ACTR, FLAS, Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian Studies, the University of Colorado’s Institute of Behavioral Science, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. In 2011-2012, she was supported by a Mellon New Directions fellowship to study ecology and environmental law.
Publications
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Do Perverse Insurance Incentives Encourage Coastal Vulnerability?
Natural Hazards Review, 2022
Subsidized insurance is often described as a perverse incentive, moral hazard, or maladaptation that perpetuates coastal resi-dencies in vulnerable homes despite increasing safety and economic risks from hurricanes, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts.Insurance is also often described as a positive factor in coastal risk reduction if insurers proactively reward homeowners for upgradesthat mitigate losses from hurricanes. The empirical and policy-relevant question remains whether homeowners perceive insurance incentivesas perverse or positive. A new survey of 662 North Carolina coastal homeowners shows that most are failing to upgrade their homes toaddress hurricane risk or plan for coastal retreat but not because they expect insurance to cover losses. Rather those aware ofinsurance incentives are more likely to live in better-protected residences and take the incentivized actions. Limited awareness of existingpolicies suggests a need for greater outreach by policymakers, lenders, and insurers.