The article, coauthored with environmental governance researcher Nicholas Goedeking, advances understanding of the mechanisms of trans-subsystem policy change, offering a model of the politics of tipping points.
Jonas Meckling is a professor of energy and environmental policy at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he leads the Energy and Environment Policy Lab and the Climate research program of the Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative.
Meckling studies the politics of climate policy and the energy transition, with a focus on the intersection of climate and economic policy. He is the author of two books and publishes his research in leading journals, including Nature and Science. He has received multiple awards for his research from the American Political Science Association.
Previously, he was visiting professor at Harvard Business School and Yale University, served as senior advisor to the German Minister for the Environment and Renewable Energy, was a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, and worked at the European Commission. He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.
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Recent publications
Journal Article
July 20, 2023
In this journal article, which received the American Political Science Association's Theodore J. Lowi Award, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling and his coauthor Nicholas Goedeking, researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, advance a model of the politics of tipping points based on trans-subsystem policy feedback that results in "coalition cascades."
Journal Article
December 22, 2025
Many countries assume that leading with subsidies ("carrots") reduces the need for punitive policies ("sticks") to achieve decarbonization goals. In this paper for Nature, co-authored by BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling, the authors use an economic model that allows them to compare carrot- and stick-first policy decisions, finding that a carrot-first strategy still requires similar-sized sticks to a stick-first approach to achieve comparable levels of decarbonization.
Journal Article
September 24, 2025
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.