Work-in-progress
Pathways of the Environmental State: Global Climate Politics in the Amazon Rainforest
*under review
ASA Environmental Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
ASA Sociology of Development Graduate Student Paper Award
ASA Political Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
As cases of decarbonization are rare, we know little about how states build and lose the capacity to reduce emissions. Based on a comparative-historical analysis of Brazil’s drastic reduction and later resurgence of CO₂ between 1985 to 2022, this article describes decarbonization as state-building, shaped by globalizing and scientizing dimensions. It shows how, when trying to solve novel problems, bureaucrats leverage transnational and scientific ties to shelter from politics and experiment. Over time, these ties strengthen and expand the territorial reach of decarbonization policies, but they also bring them into conflict with economic elites and attract their opposition. Elites constrain implementation, but capacity remains in place due to a minimal agreement that decarbonization is a state responsibility. Democratic backsliding triggers the collapse of that agreement: opponents occupy the bureaucracy and dismantle the foundations of state capacity. The article then specifies the scope conditions under which states build and lose capacity and discusses its contributions.
Insulating Decarbonization from Bolsonaro: How Transnational Finance Can Shield Policy in Times of Democratic Backsliding
*full draft available
In times of democratic erosion and climate crisis, insulating policy funds is critical to sustaining long-term state capacity and ensuring policy survival. This article shows how funders, lawyers, and bureaucrats create financial intermediaries that help safeguard policy by leveraging four socio-legal strategies: (1) capitalization — who is allowed to finance the intermediary; (2) governance — the decision-making processes embedded in the intermediary; (3) procurement — which legal entity holds and manages the funds; and (4) domestication — how the intermediary is connected to domestic public policy. To illustrate the framework’s utility, I use a sequential mixed-methods design centered on climate finance in Brazil. First, I construct an original dataset of over 3,600 transnational climate-related grants to Brazilian state and non-state actors (1990–2020), showing the central role of financial intermediaries. Second, drawing on interviews and archival documents, I examine how these intermediaries were deliberately designed with distinct socio-legal strategies aimed at shielding climate policy from political and fiscal shocks. Finally, I demonstrate how different socio-legal strategies account for policy survival when the environmental state was under attack by Bolsonaro. I conclude by discussing how such strategies contribute to policy resilience in the face of democratic backsliding, highlighting similar instances of policy insulation attempts in the Global South.
Whose Merit, which Redistribution? How ideas about deservingness shape elites’ policy preferences in Brazil and South Africa [with Graziella Moraes Silva and Matias Lopez]
*under review
An expanding literature in the social sciences argues that meritocracy—understood as elites’ belief in their own personal effort or their tendency to stigmatize the poor as unwilling to work hard—serves to legitimate social inequalities and oppose redistribution. This study revisits the idea that these two notions of merit necessarily go together. Instead, we put forth that thinking about self-worth and about the undeservingness of others constitute different themes in elites’ views about meritocracy, with varied implications for different redistributive policies such as taxation or direct transfers. Using data from elite surveys in Brazil and South Africa, we examine whose merit matters for which types of redistribution. Our main finding is that while elites are more likely to congratulate themselves for hard work than to disqualify the poor; it is the latter that explains their attitudes towards redistribution. The underservingness of the poor is more systematically associated with elites’ preferences for policies that give income to the poor. Meanwhile, ideas about elite merit are associated with rejection to policies that take income from but only because they confound with other elite traits such as race and ideology. We discuss these findings considering Brazil and South Africa political culture and conclude that the relationship between meritocracy and support for redistribution among elites is much more contingent than previously thought.
Mixing Methods in the Digital Era: Positionality in Computationally Entrenched Fieldwork
*full draft available
Scholars writing about the potential of mixing qualitative and computational methods have rightly focused on machine learning. However, computation also transforms qualitative fieldwork in quieter but pervasive ways, through scrapping, parsing, optical character recognition, storing, and zooming. This paper situates computational methods as more mundane features of a wider digital era that entrenches fieldwork spatially (by increasing its geographical reach), temporally (by accelerating it), and epistemically (by introducing scientific bias and ethical problems). It argues for a reflexive practice of documenting the process through which research questions, data collection, and interpretations evolve. The paper enacts this approach by drawing on a study of how Brazil developed decarbonization capacities in the Amazon that, given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, was structured in three moments. Before the lockdown, fieldwork relied on direct observation and interviews with environmental fieldworkers and policymakers. During lockdown, computation provided continuity: web scraping, archival digitization, and machine learning substituted travel and extended the field in time and space. After restrictions eased, these computational results were reintroduced into interviews through visualizations that prompted reflections but also biased them. These moments show how computation can help the everyday craft of fieldwork in quieter ways and how documentation constitutes good scientific and ethical practice.
National backlash and the material erosion of the liberal world order: how democratic backsliding defunds the United Nations [with Henrique Sposito]
*writing up; data collection methodology and descriptive findings are available here
Recent scholarship has centered on the relationship between democratic backsliding and the liberal world order. Existing research suggests that, rather than fully withdrawing from, backsliding governments adjust their rhetoric and adopt strategic maneuvers to stall the diffusion of liberal norms within IOs. Yet, we know little about whether these governments also reduce their financial support—beyond the anecdotal case of Trump’s recent defunding. This article examines whether and how democratic backsliding affects IO funding. We employ a mixed-methods design leveraging a dataset covering over 30’000 member-states’ donations to 65 UN organizations from 2013 to 2024. First, using fixed-effects models, we test the relationship between democratic backsliding and states’ financial contributions globally. Across a range of operationalizations and specifications, we find no systematic effect of backsliding even if we account for organizational mandate and timing. In the second step, we conduct comparative case analysis of Brazil and the United States. Diff-in-diff estimates show that both the Trump (2017–2020) and Bolsonaro (2019–2023) administrations restructured UN funding, but in selective ways: the United States reduced voluntary contributions to normative agencies such as UN Women, while Brazil redirected funds toward technical programs. We complement these findings with documentary evidence illustrating how each administration justified or implemented these changes. Our results suggest that backsliding governments do not necessarily disengage from the UN system but recalibrate their financial commitments in ways that reflect selective resistance.
Easy and Hard Decarbonization: The (Im)possibility of Ecological Modernization in the Global South
*data analysis phase
Ecological modernization theories foresee a positive relationship between economic growth and environmental protection, but evidence of such possibility remains scant in the age of the climate breakdown. A potential exception regularly put forth by environmentalists is Brazil: from 2004 to 2012, the country drastically reduced deforestation while increasing GDP. I argue the Brazilian case is not an example of ecological modernization: greening and growing coincided but are not causally linked. Rather, I demonstrate how negative environmental externalities were displaced in time and space. Building on the distinction between easy and hard redistribution, I propose a similar distinction for decarbonization. Expansions of the environmental state occur when the trade-off between greening and growth is small enough to generate supporting policy coalitions that do not draw attention from opposition (easy decarbonization). When the trade-off hardens, business elites block CO2 (hard decarbonization). I argue that Brazil in specific and many other Global South countries more generally are currently in a phase of hard protection. I discuss this framework considering other experiences, highlighting the conditions under which ecological modernization remains possible—or foreclosed—in the region.