Research

Working Papers:

Collective Reciprocity and the Failure of Climate Change Mitigation Treaties, Draft, under review

Comprehensive climate change mitigation treaties negotiated thus far—the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement—have relied on enforcement through what I call “collective reciprocity,” in which non-cooperation is punished by the reciprocal denial of collective goods. Because such goods are non-excludable, withholding them from defectors means also withholding them from compliers. This means that punishments affect all states, not just the defecting states. Such an enforcement regime is sharply limited and cannot sustain the kind of deep and broad cooperation that would be required for effective climate change mitigation. In what I call “selective reciprocity,” on the other hand, defection is punished by the reciprocal denial of selective goods. These excludable goods can be withheld from defectors while simultaneously supplied to compliers, meaning that punishments can narrowly target the initial defector. Selective reciprocity is thus a more effective enforcement design than collective reciprocity and can scale to sustain deep and broad cooperation regimes. I contrast the failure of Kyoto and Paris–collective reciprocity treaties–with the success of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol–a selective reciprocity treaty mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This article’s novel theoretical distinction between collective and selective reciprocity advances the literature on treaty design and international cooperation, connecting it to the burgeoning research program on climate clubs. To empirically demonstrate the failures of Kyoto and Paris as well as the success of Kigali, I use a generalized synthetic control; I compare the emissions of treated states to those of untreated states after weighting untreated states by their similarity to the treatment group.

Climate National Interest: Explaining Variation in Unilateral Climate Change Mitigation, Draft

I argue that states pursue coherent climate national interests, which have received little theoretical or empirical attention in climate politics research. National climate change mitigation levels are the product of the costs/benefits of climate change action and state size, an indicator of invulnerability to free-riding. I derive this theory and connect it to the extant literature on climate politics with a framework that interrelates state climate change mitigation interests, preferences, behaviors, and outcomes. I validate my model of climate national interests by predicting the difference between real emissions changes and a novel estimate for counterfactual emissions changes. The theoretical framework and the counterfactual estimation methodology developed in this article can facilitate future work on climate mitigation politics, from both international and domestic politics approaches.

Climate Finance as a Principal-Agent Problem

Climate finance constitutes a principal-agent problem in which funder states and recipient states must cooperate on mitigation projects despite diverging information and interests. This paper develops a novel theory of the tension between donor and recipient preferences over which of three possible counterfactual investments are replaced by green financing (brown, green, and none). While donor states prefer financing to replace brown investments, recipient states seek financing to replace green investments or no investment. Democracy, corruption, and project attributes also predict heterogeneity in this funder-recipient divide. I test these hypotheses on a cross-sectional time series of outcomes from projects funded by the Clean Development Mechanism. This work generates both practical recommendations for the rapidly growing use of climate finance and theoretical opportunities for future research on climate finance as a cooperation dilemma in international relations.

Environmentalism as Long-Term Good Provision: Evidence from Forest Conservation, Draft

This article develops a novel institutional theory of long-term environmental good provision, particularly forest conservation. Long goods, or those for which payoffs are delayed over time, are more likely to be provided by states with long institutions, or those with low discount rates and strong inter-temporal commitment mechanisms. Specifically, I demonstrate that long executive tenures, which lower institutional discount rates, and robust rule of law, which allows effective inter-temporal commitment, can facilitate the resolution of long-term problems such as forest conservation and many other forms of environmental protection. I leverage a cross-sectional time-series of forest coverage by country to test these predictions. The theory of institutional time horizons outlined in this article carries significant promise for explaining the variation in environmental protection which is not currently explained by prevailing theories centered around state capacity, collective action, and distributive politics. It also has implications for theorizing the institutional determinants of climate change policy, which I address in the conclusion.

Work in Progress:

Prospects for Climate Change Mitigation in a New Cold War

Effective climate change mitigation will require significant joint action by the US and China. Because such mitigation will be costly, catalytic, and long-term, rising security competition between these states could complicate such efforts. I describe two mechanisms through which great power security competition will affect their climate action. First, great powers facing increased security competition will be less likely to engage in mitigation due to lower trust, heightened focus on relative gains, and heightened focus on short-term security threats. Second, great powers facing increased security competition will have a more difficult time coercing third-party states to mitigate. Greater tensions between great powers increases their dependence on allies, providing third-party states with exit options and bargaining leverage. My argument contradicts prominent theories of international order which depict policy disputes as independent across different issues or questions, including climate change and security. My argument also contradicts theories which acknowledge the connection of climate change and security but which hypothesize positive feedback between these policy spaces, such as if security competition spurred a race to the top in climate investments. I test my predictions for hypothetical US and Chinese climate change action on the historical case of US action on the mitigation of ozone-depletion while locked in security competition with the USSR.

Networks of Power: The International Politics of Trade in Electricity

Environmental Advantages of Late Development

Lobbying Implications of Property-Based Chemical Regulation
with Kinnari M. Shah