Energy transitions are expected to redistribute economic benefits to new actors, from local communities to countries with renewable resources. My research explores the classic political economy question of who benefits, looking at the role of communities, states, and firms. At the community level, I look at attitudes towards energy transitions in Jordan, a lower-middle income country rapidly transitioning to renewables with attractive jobs in this industry. Despite the top-down nature of energy policymaking in the authoritarian political context, household surveys reveal that people are highly supportive of energy transitions, especially if they perceive renewables as benefitting their communities. However, there are tensions between countries and firms that make it difficult for countries to see the kinds of local benefits present in Jordan in many other contexts. I argue that the transfer of green technologies promised in the Paris Agreement is not materializing at a large scale, des

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1/23/2025

The state is back, and it means business. Since the turn of the 21st century, state-owned enterprises, sovereign funds, and policy banks have vastly expanded their control over assets and markets. Concurrently, governments have experimented with increasingly assertive modalities of statism, from techno-industrial policies and spatial development strategies to economic nationalism and trade and investment restrictions. This book argues that we are currently witnessing a historic arc in the trajectories of state intervention, characterized by a drastic reconfiguration of the state's role as promoter, supervisor, shareholder-investor, and direct owner of capital across the world economy. It offers a comprehensive analysis of this “new state capitalism”, as commentators increasingly refer to it, and maps out its key empirical manifestations across a range of geographies, cases, and issue areas.

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11/18/2024

UCL IIPP in conversation series 10th Oct 2024 Uncommon Wealth is the little known and shocking history of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire. It is the story of how an interconnected group of British capitalists enabled horrific inequality across the globe, profiting in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. However, the greed unleashed in this era would boomerang, now leaving many ordinary Britons wondering where their own prosperity has gone. Ranging from Jamaica to Singapore, Ghana to Britain, this is a blistering account of how buried decisions of decades past are ravaging Britain today. Speaker: Dr Kojo Koram | Reader in Law at Birkbeck College, University of London Discussant: Reverend Professor Keith Magee | Visiting Professor in Cultural Justice at the UCL IIPP Chair: Dr Cecilia Rikap | Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL IIPP

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10/14/2024

This event marks the launch of Mission Critical, a new report authored by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, looking at the future of mission driven governance in the UK.This project, advanced by IIPP in partnership with The Future Governance Forum (FGF), builds on IIPP’s extensive work on mission-oriented innovation and industrial strategy over the past six years - notably, Professor Mazzucato’s internationally renowned 2021 book Mission Economy: a moonshot guide to changing capitalism and IIPP’s subsequent work to translate the theory of mission-oriented policy into practice with government partners around the world. It also draws from the deep, practical experience of the London Borough of Camden in translating a mission-oriented strategy into practice.

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5/31/2024

The first of two lectures, this discussion will look at the 2008 financial crisis and will seek to dispel a number of myths that have spread about the crisis since. It will examine the deep roots of the crisis in the neoliberal economic model, the nature of how the crisis emerged and unfolded, and the core character of the policy response of the countries at its centre. The lecture is presented by Professor Damon Silvers, Visiting Professor of Practice at UCL IIPP and Former Deputy Chair of the US Congressional Oversight Panel for Troubled Asset Relief Program.

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5/10/2024

As digital platforms have become more integral to not just how we live, but also to how we do politics, the rules governing online expression, behaviour, and interaction created by large multinational technology firms --- popularly termed ‘content moderation,’ ‘platform governance,’ or ‘trust and safety’ --- have increasingly become the target of government regulatory efforts seeking to shape them. This book provides a conceptual and empirical analysis of this important and emerging tech policy terrain of ‘platform regulation.’ How, why, and where exactly is it happening? Why now? And how do we best understand the vast array of strategies being deployed across jurisdictions to tackle this issue? Speaker: Dr Robert Gorwa Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Discussant: Marisol Manfredi PhD Candidate of Sustainable Development & Climate Change (IUSS Pavia + University of Pisa), Chair: Dr Cecilia Rikap Head of Research & Associate Prof in Economics, IIPP

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5/8/2024

The second lecture in the Labour and Climate Change series will look at four case studies over the last two years—President Biden’s massive climate-related public investment agenda and the response from US trade unions, the effort to decarbonise the British steel industry, the attempt to phase out the South African coal mining industry, and the effort by President Lula to decarbonise Brazil’s economy after years of climate denial under his predecessor. In each case, the interactions of government, labour parties, and labour unions provides lessons about what to do and not to do to fight climate change effectively, both in the developed and the developing world. The lecture will be presented by Professor Damon Silvers

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5/2/2024

The first public talk as part of the UCL IIPP Labour and Climate Change Series 2024 will explore the nature of climate change as both a political economy problem and an engineering problem, the implications of the increasingly alarming science of climate change, the nature of state action required to effectively fight climate change in the closing window we have left, and the critical role of workers, their unions and their political organisations in providing the political backing necessary for effective climate policy. The lecture is presented by Professor Damon Silvers and was recorded on the 25th April 2024

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4/29/2024