My current research focuses on the political economy of the power sector under state capitalism in an era of climate change. I am interested in why political elites in the Global South sometimes perceive emerging low-carbon technologies as a threat, and at other times as an opportunity.
Dissertation Project
“Selecting for Solar: Energy Planning, Elite Strategy, and Distributive Politics”
Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, many low-carbon power generation technologies (wind, solar, geothermal) became economically feasible at scale for low and middle-income countries, yet, only some governments chose to exploit this opportunity. My ongoing dissertation research, which will result in three papers and eventually a book manuscript, seeks to explain such variation in the context of so-called “patronage democracies” and competitive authoritarian regimes. Using a combination of formal theory, comparative historical analysis, and process tracing, I analyze the conditions under which incumbent governments have incentives to plan for low and high-carbon power plants, respectively. Empirically, the focus is on India and Indonesia (plus six additional shadow cases), using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data gathered from nearly a year of fieldwork.
Paper #1: “Low Carbon for the Short Term? Political Time Horizons and Incentives for Energy Transition.”
Paper #2: “Resource Nationalism and Climate Attitudes in Indonesia.”
Paper #3: “What Do We Learn from Backlash? Agenda Control and Bargaining Over Decarbonization.”
Book Project:
Going Fast and Slow: Energy Transitions, State Capitalism, and the Politics of Distributive Control in South and Southeast Asia.
Peer-Reviewed Article
“National Models of Climate Governance,” with Esther Shears and Jonas Meckling. Published in Nature Climate Change, 2023.
National climate institutions structure the process of climate mitigation policymaking and shape climate policy ambition and performance. Countries have, for example, been building science bodies, passing climate laws, and creating new agencies. Here, we provide the first systematic comparison of climate institutions across twenty-one of the largest emitters. Drawing on an original dataset, we identify in a bottom-up cluster analysis four national models of climate governance—Climate Technocracies, Climate Developmentalists, Carbon Fragmentists, and Carbon Centralists. These national models of climate governance are associated with policy ambition and performance. Climate Technocracies and Developmentalists tend to score higher than Carbon Fragmentists and Centralists in policy ambition and performance. The relative ambition of national models of governance is associated with some macro-institutional and macro-economic features, but not others. This suggests potential for domestic and international policymakers to invest in building national climate institutions across country settings to strengthen climate policy capacity.
Working Paper
“When the River Runs Dry: Hydropower Stress and the Energy Transition,” with Anthony Calacino, Aaditee Kudrimoti, and Ishana Ratan.
Do energy shocks 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 climate-induced energy supply shocks, 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 have a significant effect on buildout. We develop and test three mechanisms for this apparent divergence: State capacity, myopia, and interest group resistance. Large-N tests reveal nuanced evidence in support of the state capacity and myopia explanations, while qualitative case work illuminates the role of sector-specific state capacity and interest group resistance. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the energy transition in hydropower dependent countries.
Working Paper
“Does Democracy FiT? The Distributive Politics of Renewable Energy Reconsidered,” with Ishana Ratan
Feed-in Tariff (FiT) policies have catalyzed the majority of global renewable energy deployment, raising questions about the political causes of their enactment and implementation. Influential research suggests political incumbents in democracies have greater incentive to adopt FiT policies than those in autocracies. In this paper we revisit this theory using a new and expanded dataset which includes more recent years, as well as more granular data on policy enactment and implementation. Our replication analysis complicates the claim that democracies adopt FiTs at higher rates than autocracies: The number of authoritarian governments adopting FiTs has dramatically increased over the past decade, while many democratic governments have repealed or abandoned their FiT policies. Further, outside of rich countries, we find weak to nonexistent support for three mechanisms proposed for the democratic hypothesis: Environmental public goods, rural bias, and progressive redistribution. Democratic publics often do not value the particular bundle of environmental goods and bads presented by renewable energy over conventional sources, FiT policies often do not reward and can even disfavor rural interests, and FiT implementation typically does not result in progressive redistribution. Our results suggest the uptake of the FiT follows different political logics in high vs. low income countries. Further, the effects of policy are not homogenous among adopters, and distributional benefits may depend on factors beyond incumbent governments’ political objectives. The results also urge caution regarding the claim that decentralized renewable energy production will contribute to more democratic political futures.
In Progress
“Cabinet Minister Selection and Environmental Policymaking,” with Bill Kakenmaster.
“Do Voters Reward Incumbents for Successful Disaster Preparation? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India," with Jennifer Bussell.
“Electoral Cycles in Energy Planning: Evidence from India.”