Engagement and Events

Green industrial policy has gained prominence as a more politically feasible strategy for rapid decarbonization compared to conventional climate policies like carbon pricing. We build on insights from retrospective voting models to theorize the electoral effects of green industrial policy. We then analyze the effect of the US Inflation Reduction Act(IRA) -- a recent and far-reaching green industrial policy -- on Democratic vote share in the 2024 presidential election. Using a difference-in-differences research design with entropy balancing, we compare counties that receive IRA-induced private sector investment to observationally similar counties that do not receive investment.

This paper focuses on an important aspect of the energy transition in the context of South Asia – the transition to electric mobility. It employs a detailed case study of the introduction of an electric vehicle (EV) policy in Pakistan, a country of 220 million with a rapidly rising automobile ownership rate, to ask what factors determined the scope and implementation of the policy. Employing process tracing, it tracks the evolution of the policy over the span of two years to show how (i) even in cases of industry-government coordination, challengers can mount a policy offensive by building coalitions with non-industry actors and strategically choosing their policy forums, and (ii) established incumbents can retaliate and limit the scope of proposed policies, but struggle to remove them from the agenda entirely once they’re on the discussion table. The case study contributes to our understanding of the politics of the energy transition in emerging and developing country contexts.

20 March 2025

How Politics Percolates Through Science
Dahyun Choi (Princeton University)

Social Discontent and Populist Backlashes in Europe's Green Transition
Mahir Yazar (University of Bergen) 

13 March 2025

Political signaling drives China's carbon market, not market signals
Chen Xiang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Natural Disasters and the Electability of Women: Evidence from Philippine Mayoral Elections
Holly Jansen (University of California San Diego)

6 March 2025

Greening in Groups: Firm Concentration and Lobbying on Green Industrial Policy
Ryan Pike (Yale University)  

Supply Chains and Political Strategies: Analyzing Firm Responses to the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism  
Lingbo Zhao (Penn State University)

20 February 2025

Do climate events drive support for climate change policies?
Cèlia Estruch-Garcia (University of Barcelona)  

Safety Net or Self Reliance? U.S. Public Opinion on Federal Aid After Natural Disasters
Angie Jo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Rachael Kha (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

5th December 2024

Climate Change, Political Conflict, and Democratic Resilience
Austin Beacham (Georgia Institue of Technology), Christina J. Schneider (UCSD), and Emilie M. Hafner-Burton (UCSD)    

Chasing the Sun: The Political Economy of Solar Industry Investment in the Global South
Ishana Ratan (UC Berkeley)

21st November 2024

Towards an environmental welfare state? Protecting populations against environmental risks and disasters in the age of the climate crisis.
Lydie Cabane (Leiden University) and Anne Laure Beaussier (Sciences Po)     

The Role of Social Protection for a Just Transition in Developing and Emerging Economies
Katrin Gasior (Southern African Social Policy Research Insights)     

7th November 2024

More than Symbols : The Effect of Symbolic Policies on Climate Policy Support
Théodore Tallent (Sciences Po), Malo Jan (Sciences Po), and Luis Sattelmayer (Sciences Po)

Cost, Risk, and Threat: The Material & Contextual Factors Driving Climate Policy Preferences
Max Bradley (EUI)- Max Bradley will present in person at 5.00pm.

24th October 2024

Does Warm Weather Cool Voters Down? How Temperature Fluctuations Impact Voting and Climate Concerns
Maria Cotofan (King's College London) Karly Kuralbayeva (King's College London), and Konstantinos Matakos (King's College London and Harvard)

Measuring Climate Change Salience in Political Manifestos: A Computational Text Analysis Approach
Mary Sanford (RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment)