Abstract: When is science politicized in the international climate change regime? Does greater scientific certainty protect it from becoming politically contentious? I study these questions in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization responsible for communicating the global scientific consensus on climate change. Using newly digitized data from interstate negotiations at the IPCC, I show that states attempt to influence the IPCC’s assessment of scientific consensus in line with their bargaining positions in climate change agreements. Estimating an ideal point model, I find that the predominant cleavage over climate science is distributional: between new and old industrializers, rather than between large polluters and vulnerable countries. Second, I show that this cleavage is mediated by scientific uncertainty. Large polluters are more likely to agree on interpretations of uncertain science, which allows them to weaken the scientific basis for strong climate agreements. Conversely, these countries are less likely to agree on relatively certain science, which heightens conflict over the distribution of the burden of mitigation. Greater scientific certainty may not decrease the politicization of science but instead changes the nature of this politicization.

Working Paper

Abstract: Economically depressed communities often organize politically for policies counteracting their decline. This paper shows that successful economic adjustment to this decline can enhance their political mobilization. I study this in the context of the Swadeshi Movement in colonial India, an economic nationalist movement in 1905 that combined mass grievance against both colonial administration and free trade policies that exposed Indian artisans to technologically advanced competition from Britain. Using newly digitized archival data and exploiting the rollout of the Indian railways in the late 19th century, I find that regions that obtained greater access to global markets featured both successful economic adjustment of deskilled communities to agriculture and greater support for anti-imperialist economic nationalism. Probing mechanisms, I find that increased exposure to global markets brought together a coalition of deskilled artisans and urban elites into a coherent political movement for protectionism and anti-imperialism. Ostensibly successful economic adjustment may diminish economic grievances but also enhance the ability of communities to organize politically.

Working Paper

Abstract: Despite the prominence of compensation as a strategy to stem opposition from groups harmed by policy reforms or economic disruption, governments often fail to provide adequate adjustment assistance. We argue that leaders have political incentives to distort compensation funding when voters oppose the reform and the benefits of assistance are delayed. We evaluate our argument in the context of the Appalachian Regional Commission's program to help coal mining communities adjust to the clean energy transition. We collect novel grant-level data from 2007-2019 to study how much and what type of funds coal communities receive. Using a triple-differences design, we detect political distortions, where coal counties in Republican states are less likely to receive assistance. State-level public opinion data show this distortion is in line with the median voter's climate policy preferences, and there is no indication that assistance improved economic outcomes. Whether compensation is an effective political strategy depends on the incentives of leaders to offer it in the first place.

Abstract: Conventional wisdom asserts that technological change creates conflict between winners and losers. This perspective overlooks a major political consequence of technological change: conflict between potential winners. I provide a theoretical framework in which biased technological change increases the returns to owning a specific factor of production, creating conflict around the ownership of that factor. I demonstrate this in the case of New Zealand in the late 19th century, where the introduction of refrigerated shipping massively increased the demand for livestock exports, increasing the return to land ownership. Using newly digitized archival data and a difference-in-differences design, I show that the refrigeration shock increased the alienation of indigenous Māori land by the colonial state. Exploring mechanisms, I find that refrigeration made smaller-scale farming more viable, allowing political entrepreneurs to create a new constituency by redistributing Māori land to European settlers. That is, technological change biased in favor of land increased the political contentiousness of land ownership.

Abstract: How do workers displaced by automation organize politically to counter-act their decline? In this paper, I argue that in the absence of institutions designed to deal with automation, displaced workers and their communities will gravitate towards remedies meant for trade. I test this claim by showing that displaced workers are more likely to erroneously file petitions for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) in labor markets that have adopted industrial robots as a substitute for labor. Further, more automation-exposed communities are more likely to correctly identify their political representative's position on trade (but not non-trade issues). I interpret this as evidence that the long-standing political focus on trade channels automation-displaced communities towards collective action meant for trade. Overall, the lack of compensation for automation-based displacement might itself be the result of a political system that artificially raises the salience of trade policy and that therefore fails to accurately aggregate information about the causes of job loss.