Event
December 3, 2025
Announcement
October 27, 2025
Hard questions are our starting point.
The Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative (BESI) investigates political and economic power to reveal how these forces shape the practice of democracy and the pursuit of shared prosperity.
The latest at BESI
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Event RecapOctober 27, 2025
Goliath’s curse: Climate, Inequality, and Societal Collapse
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Event RecapOctober 21, 2025
Panel conversation: Assessing democratic backsliding
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BlogSeptember 29, 2025
What the geoeconomic turn in decarbonization means for policymakers
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Event RecapJuly 2, 2025
3 takeaways from BESI’s blue trifectas convening
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Policy BriefApril 24, 2025
What drives high costs in blue states?
Big problems. Big ideas.
Our research focuses on some of the most urgent threats to genuine, sustainable, and broad-based prosperity: climate change, technological disruption, and the distortions and demands of unfettered capitalism. We have launched major new programs on the political economy of California and green industrial strategy.
Advancing the interdisciplinary study of political economy
BESI funds crucial discoveries at the doctoral level.
We’re proud to support the Designated Emphasis (DE) in Political Economy at UC Berkeley. DE students participate in vital discussions outside their home disciplines, enhancing dialogues and enabling research at the cutting edge of scholarship.
Research spotlight
The geoeconomic turn in decarbonization
In this article, published in Nature, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling gives an account of a major shift in global decarbonization politics — from international cooperation on the costs of climate change mitigation to competition for the benefits of clean technologies.
Regulating the attention economy: The possibilities and limits of antitrust
In a September 2025 article for the journal Politics and Society, Isabella Mariani advocates for antitrust legislation that centers the autonomy of the user as part of a solution to the problems of the attention economy.
Capital, earth, and image: Photography in India’s mining landscapes
In a new article for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, environmental historian Matthew Shutzer traces how images of extractive technologies have shifted from thematizing social questions about labor and industrial capitalism to serving as representations of the ecological crises of the present.
Who wants stakeholder capitalism? Public and elite perceptions of the role of business leaders in politics
In a July 2025 article for the journal Perspectives on Politics, political science Ph.D. student and BESI graduate student researcher Sarang Shah and Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh report on the results of a survey of business leaders and the mass public. They find that while the public cares very little about corporate leader engagement, business leaders would like to see active engagement on issues from their firms, albeit from behind the scenes.
The geoeconomic turn in decarbonization
In this article, published in Nature, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling gives an account of a major shift in global decarbonization politics — from international cooperation on the costs of climate change mitigation to competition for the benefits of clean technologies.
Capital, earth, and image: Photography in India’s mining landscapes
In a new article for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, environmental historian Matthew Shutzer traces how images of extractive technologies have shifted from thematizing social questions about labor and industrial capitalism to serving as representations of the ecological crises of the present.
Fighting the future: Short-term investors and business opposition to climate policy
In a new pre-print published published by the American Political Science Association, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling investigates how an economy’s exposure to “impatient capital” predicts the amount of opposition policymakers will face to decarbonization policy.
Sparking adaptation: The politics of reforming effective interconnection regimes in Massachusetts and New York
In the rush to meet net-zero emissions targets, delays in connecting new, clean electricity generators are a major obstacle. One culprit of these delays is ineffective policy. Why do some states manage to overcome political barriers to interconnection? This case study, authored by energy policy research and BESI Climate affiliate Kathryn Chelminski, compares the utility interconnection regimes in New York and Massachusetts to find out.
Who wants stakeholder capitalism? Public and elite perceptions of the role of business leaders in politics
In a July 2025 article for the journal Perspectives on Politics, political science Ph.D. student and BESI graduate student researcher Sarang Shah and Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh report on the results of a survey of business leaders and the mass public. They find that while the public cares very little about corporate leader engagement, business leaders would like to see active engagement on issues from their firms, albeit from behind the scenes.
Market governance as a balance of power
In an essay for the journal Politics & Society, BESI participating faculty and steering committee member Steve Vogel conceptualizes market governance as a balance of power and discusses the implications for current debates over antitrust policy.
Civil service adoption in America: The political influence of city employees
In their May 2025 article for American Political Science Review, BESI participating faculty member Sarah Anzia and her co-author Jessica Trounstine analyze data from more than 1,000 municipal governments to determine the role city employees played in the transition from patronage-based systems to civil service in local government.
The partisan realignment of American business: Evidence from a survey of corporate leaders
Sarang Shah, a Ph.D. candidate in political science and a Designated Emphasis in Political Economy student, and his co-author, Eitan Hersh, recently conducted a survey of American firm leaders’ political alignment. The two present their results in a May 2025 article in the British Journal of Political Science.
Regulating the attention economy: The possibilities and limits of antitrust
In a September 2025 article for the journal Politics and Society, Isabella Mariani advocates for antitrust legislation that centers the autonomy of the user as part of a solution to the problems of the attention economy.
An antimonopoly approach to governing artificial intelligence
Legal scholar and BESI Technology Network affiliate Tejas N. Narachania makes the case for an antimonopoly approach to governing AI in this article for Yale Law & Policy Review, co-authored by Ganesh Sitaraman, the New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University.
Critical computation on a geographical register
Today’s critiques about geography in a world influenced by AI shadow debates from two decades ago, argues geographer and BESI Technology Network affiliate Clancy Wilmott in an article for the journal Dialogues in Human Geography. By returning to these debates, as well as critique by Black, queer, and Indigenous computing seen in other disciplines, geographers have the opportunity to deeply influence the future of computation via a situated, critical geographical thought and action.
When code isn’t law: Rethinking regulation for artificial intelligence
In this article for the journal Policy and Society, BESI Technology Network affiliate Brian Judge and his co-authors at the Center for Human-Compatible AI examine the challenges of regulating AI and propose an adapted model of regulation suitable for AI’s novel features.
What drives high costs in blue states?
BESI Political Economy of California senior researcher Samuel Trachtman explains the red-blue state cost-of-living divide.
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Upcoming events
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