Why are some governments more effective in promoting economic change than others? We develop a theory of the institutional sources of economic transformation. Institutions can facilitate transformation through two central mechanisms: insulation and compensation. The institutional sources of transformation vary across policy types — whether policies impose costs primarily on consumers (demand-side policies) or on producers (supply-side policies). Proportional electoral rules and strong welfare states facilitate demand-side policies, whereas autonomous bureaucracies and corporatist interest intermediation facilitate supply-side policies. We test our theory by leveraging the 1973 oil crisis, an exogenous shock that compelled policymakers to simultaneously pursue transformational change across industrialized countries. Evidence from the generalized synthetic control method, case studies, and discourse network analysis support our hypotheses. The findings have important implications for contemporary transformations including climate change policy and low-carbon transitions.
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.
September 17, 2025
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.
August 1, 2025
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.