How does a state's withdrawal from international regulatory regimes reshape firms’ environmental behavior? Despite growing backlash against international institutions and calls to “take back control,” the environmental consequences of international withdrawal remain theoretically and empirically underdeveloped. Focusing on the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, this paper examines how Brexit affected firms’ environmental behavior. We argue that, contrary to its promise of stronger national oversight, Brexit worsened local firms' environmental compliance in the short run. Additionally, we argue that these environmental outcomes were due to a realignment of market forces more so than public demand or direct firm pressures during Brexit. We test this argument in the context of oil production in the North Sea. Using geospatial data on offshore oil rigs and firm-level data between 2015 and 2023, we show that UK waters experienced significantly more oil pollution after Brexit than EU and Norwegian waters. We further link these spills to the post-Brexit fragmentation of the UK oil sector, which allowed firms to pursue short-term profits with reduced accountability. The findings offer important lessons for understanding the downstream effects of regulatory shocks that follow international disruptions.

The Global South faces existential impacts from anthropogenic climate change, yet most emerging economies are increasingly embedding themselves in climate-forcing fossil fuel production. How do regions exposed to both types of vulnerabilities relate to climate change? We argue that, in the absence of strong fossil fuel stakeholders, exposure to extreme weather events can generate disruptions which, by consequence, raise the salience of climate change and the demand for climate response. However, this mobilisation is less likely when fossil fuel industries are strong, as economic dependencies pacify local populations in the instance of climate shocks, consequently dampening climate politicization. We test our conjectures in two ways. First, we present cross-national fine-grained analyses of the Climate Vulnerability Database (2010–2023), which traces climate-relevant risks and concurrent public behavior at the municipality-monthly level in six emerging economies across three continents. Furthermore, we present text analyses of original focus group data from Brazil and Indonesia. Our empirical results reveal that climate shocks change public behavior and that, in the absence of fossil fuel production, this behavior reflects the politicization of the climate. However, these effects are systematically divergent in the presence of fossil fuels, which mute general mobilization and, consequently, the politicization of the climate. These findings highlight why the effects of climate change on political life in general, and public-driven mobilization on climate in particular, are inherently contingent on the political economy of exposed communities.

As climate change intensifies, so does its salience and potential politicization in the news media. In line with asset-specific views of climate politics, we propose a framework to explain variation in climate reporting based on the interplay of local ecological risks from climate change and anticipated economic vulnerabilities linked to the energy transition away from fossil fuels. We argue that media responses to climate shocks depend on the relative presence of climate-vulnerable populations versus fossil-fuel stakeholders, and propose that different local configurations of asset-holders affect climate coverage and attribution in different ways. In areas without a dominance of organized fossil fuel interests, ecological shocks generate more extensive media climate coverage and clearer links to fossil fuel emissions. By contrast, in local communities where carbon-intensive industries are strongly embedded, climate coverage is dampened and attribution less frequent. We test these expectations using original media content data in cross-national and sub-national Global South contexts as well as elite interviews conducted in Brazil and Indonesia. Our findings show that fossil fuel presence crucially moderates both the volume and framing of climate reporting. The results highlight how carbon interests can constrain climate discourse at precisely the moments when public engagement with climate issues is most likely.

In order to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change whilst avoiding widespread political backlash, governments around the world are considering enacting a just energy transition that addresses the concerns of various social groups in the working age population. Focusing on the gender dimension of the energy transition, this paper explores the gender-labour dynamics around support for energy jobs, and investigates under what conditions women and men may be differently inclined to take on green industry work. We argue that men and women may be interested in energy jobs for different reasons. Building on existing research on gender and climate politics, we argue that women may be more attracted to green energy jobs, even if at the expense of pay, due to their intrinsic interest in non-legacy sectors and cleaner activities. However, consistent with other economic and social research, we also expect that women give a higher premium to inclusive employment conditions and flexible work ecosystems than men. Consequently, we expect women may be less inclined to move out of social roles and trade lifestyle for green jobs. Experimental data from a novel online survey in the UK largely confirms that, while women are more inclined to take on green work than men, this preference is conditional on the socialization conditions of the job.

How do housing circumstances shape public support for climate mitigation and adaptation? We develop a theory linking climate politics to the political economy of housing, arguing that positions in the housing market shape how individuals experience climate risks and the energy transition, ultimately conditioning preferences for climate mitigation and adaptation policies. As climate and financial risks increasingly converge in the housing sector, homeowners and prospective buyers evaluate climate policies through the lens of tenure status, expected future housing costs, and anticipated effects on property values. Drawing on an original survey of 3,000 UK households, we test how housing tenure, housing quality, and place-based attachment shape individuals’ preferences over the design and targeting of mitigation and adaptation policies. We expect to find that housing-based differences systematically align preferences across groups, giving rise to distinct coalitions of support for specific types of climate mitigation and adaptation policies. We contribute to research on asset-based politics and the distributive politics of climate change by demonstrating how housing markets structure the social bases of support for climate action.

Domestic and international laws have been slow and ineffective at regulating firms in response to climate change. For this reason, voluntary self-regulation and private regulatory bodies have become increasingly important. Despite claims that firms oppose costly carbon mitigation strategies, previous research has shown variation in the extent to which firms signal their performance on climate change. What explains this variation? I develop a four-pronged theory of reputational pressure to answer this question. First, firms face different reputational pressure based on their primary consumer audience. Business-to-consumer firms face greater reputational costs of failing to act on climate, and therefore avoid exposure. Second, ‘climate-conscious’ reputations matter when consumers are primed to value them. I argue that climate disasters induce consumer awareness, and firms respond by signaling to audiences their climate-reputation. Third, reputations have cascade effects: firms are more likely to move to disclosure following large early-movers within their sector. Fourth, there is a trade-off for firms signaling action on climate; attention brings greater scrutiny, which may damage the firm’s reputation more than keeping quiet. Following poor climate evaluations, firms become much less likely to disclose in the future. Using Australia as a case study, I employ data on firm disclosure and climate-mitigating action from the Carbon Disclosure Project between 2010–2021. In addition to natural disaster data from EMDAT, I proxy for the material effects of natural disasters using insurance claims, and use a difference-in-difference estimator to compare high and low years following climate disasters. The empirical tests show reputational pressure can both induce and paralyze firm action on climate.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some multinational corporations (MNCs) went beyond compliance with sanctions and voluntarily withdrew from Russia, while other firms paused operations or continued business as usual. Why did some MNCs issue statements to the public on their decision to leave or stay? I make two key arguments. First, I argue that early movers create a benchmark against which consumers and other observers measure industry peers. Thus, when a precedent for leaving is set in an industry, those who don’t follow suit face higher reputational costs of remaining. I test the idea of intra-industry diffusion using Cox proportional hazard models with a novel longitudinal dataset of collected statements issued by firms on their position in Russia across multiple time-points. Second, remaining firms attempted to appease both international and Russian audiences by projecting politically-neutral reputations. These firms employed strategies to mitigate reputational costs. Using word-embedding techniques and topic modeling on a corpus of company statements, I show that remaining firms are less critical of Russia, less likely to issue social media statements, and more likely to leverage the legitimacy of membership in UN-adjacent multi-stakeholder initiatives. I find that remaining firms are also more likely to attempt to join these public-private partnerships post-invasion, suggesting bad actors learn how to leverage legitimacy from IO-adjacent organizations. This study provides insights into how reputation affects corporate responses to geopolitical shocks.

Fossil fuel firms as climate-forcing asset holders face an existential contradiction: their profitability mostly relies on continued hydrocarbon production, yet increasingly they are under pressure to decarbonize and appear green. Existing accounts often portray corporate greenwashing as reputation management aimed at consumers and investors. This paper argues instead that climate-forcing firms deploy greenwashing as a political strategy to shape the media and policy arenas. Using an original dataset of nearly 5,000 YouTube videos released by twelve of the world’s largest oil companies between 2008 and 2025, we apply text-as-data methods to examine when and why oil firms emphasize environmental messaging. We find that greenwashing intensifies at key political junctures: when national climate mitigation legislation is under debate, when pro-mitigation candidates are competitive in executive elections, and in the lead-up to UNFCCC climate summits. Moreover, firms based in the Global North are systematically more likely to engage in environmental messaging than Global South firms, and especially more so than state-owned firms in the Global South. These findings reposition greenwashing as a form of political influence rather than only consumer persuasion, contributing to theories of corporate power, disinformation, and the political economy of climate change.

Albeit its effectiveness is contested, firms increasingly disclose their carbon emissions and broader environmental performance indicators. Why do firms voluntarily disclose? We extend existing theories that firms self-regulate in response to the threat of regulation by arguing that firms use voluntary disclosures as a form of strategic accommodation. By disclosing information, firms seek to signal to policymakers that stringent regulations are unnecessary. To test our theory, we examine the responses of U.S. public firms to a mandatory disclosure rule proposed by the SEC in 2022. Using a novel directed and focused measure of firm lobbying, we show that firms that lobbied against mandatory disclosure were more likely to voluntarily disclose in the same period. We show that voluntary disclosures constitute a mechanism for firms to exert influence on policymaking, akin to lobbying.

Public support for carbon taxation is often theorized as a function of ideology, income, or exposure to extreme weather events. Yet emerging patterns in Europe suggest that climate preferences are increasingly structured by globalization-related value divides. This paper examines the determinants of support for carbon taxes using individual-level survey data linked to granular spatially joined regional climatic and economic indicators across Europe. Drawing on an original survey fielded across six European countries (n = 18,000) in 2022, we find that material exposure to climate shocks explains little variation in support for carbon taxation. Instead, attitudes toward trade protectionism are strongly and positively associated with climate policy support, contrary to conventional expectations. While nationalist and far-right orientations predict opposition to carbon taxes, protectionist sentiment aligns with greater support for fossil-fuel taxation. These results point to an emergent “green protectionist” or “eco-sovereigntist” cleavage, in which citizens endorse climate regulation as part of a broader agenda of economic sovereignty and industrial self-reliance.