Research

Deforestation often spikes around elections in newer democracies, as officials relax forest protections in exchange for political support, undermining a public good. The reasons behind this are unclear, and findings for other public goods like air quality are mixed. This paper proposes a new framework to explain these dynamics. It argues that electoral competition improves environmental quality when local politicians have formal responsibility, and the benefits of the environmental good are diffuse. However, when local control is limited and benefits are concentrated, local politicians can coerce the relevant authorities (e.g., federal agents), degrading environmental quality. Evidence from Brazil, comparing forest protections and sewage infrastructure, supports this framework. First, 60+ interviews with enforcement agents and politicians from nine months of fieldwork provide qualitative insights. Second, a Difference-in-Differences (DID) analysis of 300,000 deforestation-related fines around local elections tests the impact of electoral competition, showing a correlation. An Instrumental Variables analysis, using the location of evangelical churches as a proxy for electoral competition, provides evidence in favor of a causal link. Finally, similar models show an opposite effect of electoral competition on sewage infrastructure, consistent with the theory. These results advance the debate on democracy’s role in environmental quality and public goods provision. Draft: https://osf.io/x3s8t

Middle-income countries face substantial pressure from wealthy governments to reform their environmental policies and practices. Few countries have faced greater foreign criticism than Brazil, with its large population and stewardship over most of the world’s largest rainforest. What are the effects of this foreign pressure on Brazilian citizens’ opinions regarding environmental protection? In a pre-registered survey experiment (n = 1003), I probe the effects of prompts regarding foreign aid and shame from abroad on Brazilians’ attitudes toward an array of climate policies. I find that foreign pressures have limited overall effects, except that shame significantly decreases support for a carbon tax. Pre-registered heterogeneity analysis suggests that aid generally increases support for climate policy among environmentally conscious citizens. But for subjects who do not prioritize the environment, against expectations I find that aid significantly decreases support for climate policies and shame, paradoxically, sometimes increases such support. The results largely indicate that foreign pressures land very differently for distinct types of citizens based on their prior levels of environmentalism. Draft: https://osf.io/p4dtx

The Global South faces acute and existential impacts from climate change. Yet we know little about the different dimensions of climate vulnerability that characterizes these countries, and how these vulnerabilities may affect the politicization of climate change. We introduce the novel Climate Vulnerability Database that maps both ecological climate risk and climate policy vulnerability – i.e., the presence of fossil fuel extraction – at the municipality level across time in six Global South countries: Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa and Vietnam. Focusing on turnout and protests, we argue that the different dimensions of climate vulnerability have heterogeneous effects on political mobilization. We show that while ecological shocks can drive protest and depress turnout, this is mediated by existing levels of deprivation and, importantly, the presence of fossil fuels. Additionally, we find evidence for different patterns of information seeking regarding climate change following ecological shocks, with dampening in policy vulnerability communities. These findings suggest climate change is inherently distributional, and its effects on political mobilization also depend on the distribution of fossil fuels and deprivation in Global South contexts.

Previous research suggests that international competition between regulatory regimes and interest group influence can erode environmental standards by diluting domestic policy enactment. In this paper, we propose that environmental standards can decline even in a context in which regulations are not directly lobbied against and in fact remain nationally sovereign by means of populist political signals. We focus specifically on the implications that political events in favour of international disintegration have on polluting firms’ behavior. We argue that the political secession from international regulatory regimes feeds into polluting firms’ expectations about future regulatory uncertainty, and that in territories where state capacity is relatively weak, this implies that firms will start shirking from environmental compliance in the direct aftermath of such political events. We support our theory with evidence from offshore oil rig spills in the North Sea between 2015 and 2022, following the Brexit referendum. A grid-cell analysis of satellite-detected oil spills compares firm behavior in the United Kingdom, European Union, and Norwegian jurisdictions. We find that UK waters experienced nearly three times more oil spills compared to non-UK waters two years after the Brexit vote. Additionally, discrepancies between firm-reported and satellite-observed incidents, parliamentary lobbying data, and shareholder earnings transcripts provide further credence to our argument about the implications of sovereignist political events on firms’ derisking around public goods. Our findings provide new insights into how disruptions in international policy integration affect firms’ behavior and public policy standards.

The extent of influence of international organizations (IOs) in member state’s policymaking is contested, as are the potential channels of influence. I argue domestic bureaucrats play a primary role in disseminating IO norms to achieve policy goals and signal technocratic expertise. Contrary to current perspectives on bureaucratic autonomy, this argument emphasizes national legislatures as key sites to flex autonomy and promote IOs. But bureaucrats are strategic, and limit references to IOs to avoid alienating political actors who champion anti-globalism. However, public servants are inclined to reinforce each other during legislative hearings, even when led by nationalist and anti-globalist politicians, paradoxically resulting in increased references to IOs. The argument is supported using a text-as-data approach with 1500 public hearing from Brazil’s permanent Senate Commissions from 2013 to 2022. In addition, I draw on evidence from interviews and ethnographic research in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and Senate. The findings suggest an overlooked aspect of bureaucrats’ political influence. Despite rising anti-globalism, I show how IOs can remain relevant for domestic policy even when country participation at IOs is inconsistent. Link to: draft

What political conditions catalyze energy transitions? Existing work suggests energy supply shocks promote renewable energy development by disrupting entrenched interests and drawing the long-term viability of existing energy sources into question. This article examines such claims in the context of an often-overlooked energy source: Hydropower. Increasingly frequent droughts lead to electricity crises in hydropower-dependent countries, plausibly motivating governments to seek alternatives. We propose and deploy a novel measure of such deficits, which we term hydrostress, leveraging fine-grained global hydrological data. Our findings indicate severe hydrostress motivates governments to shift policymaking towards renewable energy. However, hydrostress does not affect buildout. We develop and test three mechanisms for this apparent divergence: state capacity, accountability failures, and interest group resistance. We find no evidence to support the state capacity and interest group explanations, and limited suggestive evidence for accountability failures. These findings have important implications for the energy transition in hydropower dependent countries.