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Patrick Bayer

Professor in Environmental Sustainability
& Democracy

University of Glasgow

Welcome!

I am Professor in Environmental Sustainability & Democracy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow and Research Director in Politics and International Relations. I am affiliated with the Global Sustainable Development theme in the University's Advanced Research Centre (ARC). I also serve on the Organizing Executive Committee of the Environmental Politics and Governance (EPG) network and was Conference Chair for EPG's 9th Annual Conference in Glasgow in 2023.

My research focuses on international cooperation and the political economy of environmental regulation and energy policy. I am particularly interested in how the domestic and international political economy and political incentives shape governments’, firms’, and individuals’ responses to climate change and the global energy transformation.

Currently, I study the politics of carbon markets, firms’ commitments to corporate decarbonisation, and the distributional effects of climate policy. I also lead an ESRC project on the role of science in international climate cooperation. I received the Emerging Young Scholar Award of APSA's Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) section in 2021 and successfully obtained funding from the British Academy, the Carnegie Trust, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Among other outlets, my work was published in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Energy Economics, PNAS, Science Advances and with MIT Press. My teaching regularly involves classes on international organizations and global energy/climate policy and politics.

My contact details can be found in my CV here.

Latest Publications

Foreignness as an Asset: European Carbon Regulation and the Relocation Threat among Multinational Firms

A central claim in the environmental regulation literature is that, in a globalized world economy, governments are willing to offer …
Patrick Bayer

The Politics of Sustainability: Energy Efficiency, Carbon Pricing, and the Circular Economy

The clean energy transition can be achieved by increasing the supply of clean energy or by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. …
Michaël Aklin, Patrick Bayer

Beliefs about Climate Action Consequences under Weak Global Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness

Climate policy has distributional effects, so ratcheting up climate ambition over time will only become politically feasible if the …
Patrick Bayer, Federica Genovese
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Work in progress

  • Government Participation in Virtual Negotiations: Evidence from IPCC Approval Sessions (with Lorenzo Crippa, Hannah Hughes, and Erlend Hermansen, under review).

  • Climate Policy Costs, Regional Politics and Backlash against International Cooperation (with Federica Genovese, under review).

  • Popular Support for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism: Evidence from four European Countries (with Lena Schaffer, under review).

  • The Breadth-Depth Trade-off and the Cost of Non-cooperation in Multilateral Agreements.

  • Compliance with International Environmental Regulation: Installation-level Evidence from European Carbon Markets.

  • Government Interference in Information Production of International Organizations (with Lorenzo Crippa).

  • Carbon Disclosure, Environmental Regulation, and the U.S. EXIM Bank (with Jonas Bunte).

  • Market Effects of Sluggish Policy Responses: Evidence from EU Geopolitical and Climate Interventionist Policies (with Lorenzo Crippa and Federica Genovese).

  • Is it all Cheap Talk? The Effects of International Climate Agreements on Domestic Political Debates (with Zac Greene and Christine Sylvester)

Teaching

  • POLITIC5103: Climate, Energy, and International Relations (spring 2023, graduate) [Syllabus coming soon]