Publications

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This article, authored by BESI faculty affiliate Neil Fligstein and Berkeley Sociology graduate student Janna Z. Huang and published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, examines and compares the various strategies employed by key segments of this finance industry to foster a more sustainable economy.

In a study published in the American Journal of Political Science, BESI Climate participating faculty member Amanda Clayton and her co-authors investigate how women’s representation affects climate deliberations, using community-managed forests in Malawi as a test case.

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.

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.

BESI Political Economy of California senior researcher Samuel Trachtman explains the red-blue state cost-of-living divide.