Research

Working Papers

Deindustrialization, Decarbonization and Climate Investment: A Green Bullet for a Rusty Belt?

Working Paper, 2025

Abstract: Green industrial policy (GIP) has become a common tool in post-industrial economies to both proceed with the green transition and serve as a redress for economic dislocation due to globalization. Existing literature on climate investment and its electoral impacts focuses on fossil fuel communities, leaving unclear its consequences beyond this niche. I broaden the theoretical scope of GIP, by considering how it can be both ex ante insurance against further climate-induced deindustrialization while simultaneously being ex post compensation for economic erosion due to globalization. This synergy suggests it will be particularly effective in cross-pressured communities, those with substantial emissions and having suffered import competition. Leveraging geo-located investment data from the Inflation Reduction Act, I find that on average investment has no electoral effect. However, in these cross-pressured communities, investment is associated with between 2.5 - 4.5% decreases in the shift towards the Republican Party in 2024.

Recommended citation: Pike, Ryan. (2024). Deindustrialization, Decarbonization and Climate Investment: A Green Bullet for a Rusty Belt? Working Paper.
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Flooding Feeds: Elite Issue Attention and Competition after a Natural Disaster

Submitted to World Politics, 2025

Abstract: Two rhetorical strategies dominate the party issue competition literature: issue ownership and wave-riding. Relaxing the assumption of parties as unitary actors, I theorize and empirically assess the extent to which candidates use these strategies following a salience shock. Rather than treat the two strategies as mutually exclusive, for candidates I argue they are synergistic. Concerns about opportunism both between and within parties suggest that increases in issue attention are driven by issue-owning candidates representing affected constituents. Using original candidate communication data from the 2021 German election, I leverage longitudinal and geographic variation in exposure to a natural disaster as a shock to climate salience to assess this conditional wave-riding hypothesis. Using an event study, I find that floodaffected Green candidates increase their climate issue attention compared to their unaffected partisans. Considering electoral returns to rhetoric, I find that increased climate attention was a vote-winning strategy for Green candidates.

Recommended citation: Pike, Ryan. (2025). Flooding Feeds: Elite Issue Attention and Competition after a Natural Disasters. Working Paper.
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Greening in Groups: Firm Concentration and Lobbying on Green Industrial Policy

Working Paper, 2024

Abstract: Green industrial policy is an increasingly common tool for states seeking to reach mid-century decarbonization targets. Whereas existing explanations of firm climate preferences largely focus on regulation, explanations for assistance lie at the sector level. I argue that a firm’s geographic concentration, by increasing the potential proximate benefits that a firm can accrue following expansions to the green assistance budget, increases the likelihood a firm directly lobbies on green industrial policy. Assistance budget expansions make feasible transformational decarbonization projects, large enough to spillover to multiple firms in a given area, hence those firms that are most concentrated to other firms stand to gain the most. Using French lobbying data, I assess how manufacturing firms responded to the expansion of green assistance as a part of the COVID-19 stimulus policy: France Relance. Using this exogenous funding shock in a difference-in-differences design, I find that more concentrated firms increasingly lobby on green industrial policy. This finding holds when I consider intra-industry heterogeneity in concentration with more concentrated firms increasingly lobbying alone. These results suggest that firm behavior towards green assistance is structured by a geographic rather than based on sector- or emissions intensity-based cleavage.

Recommended citation: Pike, Ryan. (2024). Greening in Groups: Firm Concentration and Lobbying on Green Industrial Policy. Working Paper.

Words of Warcraft: Experimental evidence on state’s normative principle invocation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Working Paper, 2024

Abstract: How do states communicate with the public – especially foreign audiences – about ongoing geopolitical crises? And how does a state’s invocation of normative principles affect individual engagement and political opinions? During geopolitical crises – including outbreaks of interstate war – states can use social media to sway public opinion both domestically and abroad. These irregular informational tactics may affect major conflicts by influencing key domestic populations in third-party states. We assess the effectiveness of such informational campaigns by rival geopolitical powers in the context of the ongoing War in Ukraine. Using a novel survey experiment design with interactive mock social media posts – and motivated by our analysis of 2.1 million tweets collected directly before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – we show how rival geopolitical powers’ framing of the Ukraine crisis with normative principles affects political beliefs in Hungary. Pilot results (N = 620) suggest those least in favor of liberal democracy at home are most persuaded by Russia’s subversive use of norms, despite these principles being central tenets of the liberal democratic international order. Our project sheds light on how social media influence operations can take advantage of democratic disillusionment across borders, and affect strategic success in the digital age – especially where foreign policy is central to domestic election campaigns.

Recommended citation: Melissa Pavlik and Ryan Pike. (2024). Words of Warcraft: Experimental evidence on state’s normative principle invocation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Working Paper.

Conditional Humanitarianism: Citizen Preferences for Economic Sanctions in Democratic Sender States

Working Paper, 2024

Abstract: Economic sanctions are a critical tool of international diplomacy. Existing scholarship shows that citizens in democratic sender states value sanctions which are effective in producing policy concessions. However, citizens also seek to limit the adverse humanitarian consequences of sanction imposition. How do citizens trade off between these objectives? We develop a theory of sanctions preferences where citizens (i) value policy concessions, (ii) hold humanitarian motivations, and (iii) hold beliefs about how policy change occurs in autocracies. We argue that citizens are conditional humanitarians – humanitarian concerns dominate effectiveness considerations only if policy concessions are unlikely. Results from a preregistered willingness-to-pay experiment examining the preferences of German citizens on sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine confirm the predictions of our theory.

Recommended citation: Moritz Bondeli, Isabela Mares and Ryan Pike. (2024). Conditional Humanitarianism: Citizen Preferences for Economic Sanctions in Democratic Sender States. Working Paper.