Sources of State Capacity in Clean Energy Transitions 
While my book focuses on the politics of industrial development in emerging sectors, a second research agenda examines the politics of restructuring legacy industries as part of broader climate policy efforts. Focused on interest group politics between states seeking to forge green industrial change and vested interests resisting such transformations, this research program contributes to literatures on state capacity that have thus far focused largely on institutional sources of state autonomy. Conducted in collaboration with Jonas Meckling (UC Berkeley), four papers based on this research show that states can mobilize strategic sources of state capacity even when institutions predict little autonomy in face of incumbent business interests. 

An article published in Review of International Political Economy demonstrates that pluralist political systems can offer substantial opportunities for governments to mobilize coalitions in favor clean energy transitions, even if they have traditionally been viewed as more permeable to outside pressure than corporatist equivalents. A second piece, published in Governance, shows that states can manipulate the division of labor between bureaucrats and legislators to overcome opposition to climate policy. The article won the 2018 APSA award for best article published in environmental politics. A publication in Energy Policy examines the politics of green technology bans, arguing that such announcements are predominantly a form of political signaling in a green industrial policy competition for alternative transport technologies. A fourth article from this research collaboration (2021, Comparative Political Studies) introduces the notion of strategic state capacity—the ability of the state to mobilize or demobilize interest groups in pursuit of policy goals—to explain why countries with similar levels of bureaucratic capacity can vary in their ability to meet climate goals. The article won the 2021 APSA award for Best Paper in Public Policy.

The Political Economy of Green Growth  
I have also begun collecting data for a new project (and likely book manuscript) on the politics of green growth. The project examines the distributional politics of climate change, asking when and how the economic benefits of investing in low-carbon industries are distributed domestically and in turn structure the politics of decarbonization. States have varied dramatically in the types of green growth strategies that they have been able to choose and have only in some cases been able to deliver the promised economic co-benefits of climate policy. Some states, including China and Germany, have emphasized export-driven green growth strategies, indeed yielding new jobs in manufacturing industries because of climate policy. Others, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, have focused on the domestic consumption of clean energy technologies and imported a great share of such technologies from abroad. 

My research suggests that divergent patterns of green growth reflect broader cross-national differences in macroeconomic growth models that emphasize different types of aggregate demand—stemming from exports or debt-financed consumption—in the domestic economy. The associated differences in state-business relations, labor and wage politics, and distributional outcomes shape the political coalitions that have emerged behind climate policy and affect the long-term political viability of decarbonization. A first conceptual paper based on this research was published in an edited volume on growth models by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro, and Jonas Pontusson (September 2022, Oxford University Press).

I am also advancing this research agenda on the ability of nations to combine environmental and economic growth objectives in a new project on green economic policymaking across G20 economies, focusing in particular on economic crises. In collaboration with the University of Oslo, I have been awarded a four-year grant from the Norwegian Research Council to examine the conditions under which states invest in decarbonization during economic recessions. While policymakers often announce ambitious goals to “build back better” and invest in a green recovery, economic stimulus packages in G20 economies differ substantially in their commitment to climate-related recovery measures. For instance, our data show that G20 economies have not used the Covid-19 recovery packages to reduce carbon emissions and to prevent global inequities as a result of climate change, in contrast to the economic stimulus bills of 2009. Of the nearly $15 trillion in fiscal stimulus expenditures, a mere six percent have been devoted to measures that will likely lead to emissions reductions. I have testified in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee and have briefed the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations committee on these results.

An article based on these findings was published in Nature in 2022. Works in progress from this research agenda include a paper on the political economy of green industrial policy (with Bentley Allan), the politics of reshoring in global energy supply chains (with Andreas Goldthau and Llewelyn Hughes), and the politicization of clean energy supply chains (with Bentley Allan and Joanna Lewis).