Research Interests

Ongoing research/Working papers

Choosing who to foot the bill: Distributional Politics of Green Energy Transition in Germany and the UK*

Green energy transition is inherently a distributional phenomenon. The government can shape how the costs and benefits of this transition are allocated among society and the market in a variety of ways. I refer to these interventions as distributive strategies, which include economization, redistribution, and compensation. Variations in the use of these strategies can have a significant impact on the spread of the costs and benefits of green energy transition i) between consumers-producers, ii) among consumers, and iii) between consumers-taxpayers. For instance, in Germany, the transition disproportionately benefitted renewable energy producers in comparison to the UK due to insufficient economization. Additionally, excessive redistribution in Germany led to an imbalance in burden-sharing, favoring industry at the expense of other renewable energy consumers, such as households-something less pronounced in the UK. Finally, Germany's comprehensive compensation schemes spread the costs of the transition more broadly than in the UK. Such cross-case variations raise critical questions about the equity of green energy transition: Why are the costs and benefits distributed disproportionately in one country but not in another? What compromises its fairness? And what determines the use of strategies that dictate distributional outcomes? This research seeks to answer these questions by studying the green energy transition in two countries frequently examined in the comparative political economy literature: Germany and the UK. By situating partisan politics, electoral dynamics, and interest group dynamics within a framework akin to public choice analysis, the study explores the interplay between political parties, renewable energy consumers and producers, and taxpayers. I argue that Germany and the UK employed different distributive strategies due to the differences in the two key dimensions of this framework: (i) the partisan orientation of ruling political parties, and (ii) the organized interests of consumer and producer groups, as well as taxpayers. In addition, I demonstrate how contingent dynamics associated with these variables affected the cross-case differences in outcomes.

Available at APSA preprints and SSRN

*presented at MPSA 2022, CES 2022, APSA 2022

“New Politics” of Green Energy Transition: Evidence from Europe  

Subsidies given to renewable energy technologies are a critical component of energy transition. Since the early 1990s, a substantive deal of subsidies has been granted to renewable energy sectors to facilitate the green energy transition in Europe. Subsidies, on the other hand, are usually given only temporarily: Once the market for new renewable technologies matures and becomes competitive, the government should gradually roll back subsidies. As the cost of installations decreases over time, there should be a corresponding and timely reduction in subsidy levels. At least, this is what established state aid rules in European countries suggest. In reality, however, it is not always quite easy to achieve such optimal conditions in a subsidy regime: Policy makers often struggle to orchestrate their attempts to reduce subsidies with real-time market conditions. Most importantly, decision-making processes are plagued by the pursuit of particularistic interests, with private interests triumphing over public interests: Once given, it often gets difficult to take back economic privileges like subsidies due to opposition and vested interests in the burgeoning renewable energy sectors. In this research, I aim to test this argument by using a large-N dataset on renewable subsidy levels in OECD countries. To further specify causal pathways in my argument, I also aim to utilize a nested analysis based on case studies from Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark. In these case studies, I intend to investigate specific episodes for degression in renewable subsidies in which the government ended up doing less degression in subsidies than it had originally planned because of the influence of political veto players and resistance from renewable energy producers.

*to be presented at APSA 2023

Integrating Qualitative-Methods in Social Science Inquiry*

Although burgeoning studies on qualitative research methods have been quite helpful in demonstrating the diversity of such methodological tools, not much has been written to map out these tools' differential functions in the entire research process and explain how they can complement each other. From hypothesis testing to measurement and conceptualization, research process consists of different stages. In most stages, qualitative research methods usually share a lot, but there are also stages in which qualitative methods can offer different functionalities like generalization and causal identification as well as data collection. First, we offer anaccount of these differences. Second, to offer a practical guideline, we explain how researchers can bring together qualitative methods in a complementary way to satisfy the requirements of modern social science inquiry. More specifically, we explain how qualitative tools can be utilized most effectively at each researchstep and how each qualitative tool can be combined with others throughout entire research process. Particularly in data generation, causal identification and generalization, we have a considerable maneuvering space to form optimal combinations of qualitative tools that can best serve the needs of our research. By drawing on an original data set which documents how various qualitative tools are employed in various academic outlets, our research aims to identify best practices, spot prevalent shortcomings, and offer possible solutions.

*with Mehmet Yegin; to be presented at MPSA 2023, APSA 2024; this research receives support from Center for Innovation in Social Science at Boston University,

Publications