Globalization has led to various forms of international integration whose effect on environmental behavior has been a long-standing source of debate. Yet, in recent years, there has been a growing backlash against international institutions, in part motivated by the will of taking back control of national borders. Focusing on the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, this paper explores the effects of this type of backlash on firms' environmental standards. Despite being defined as a sovereignist project to enhance state power and national regulatory oversight, we argue that Brexit caused immediate suboptimal environmental outcomes. Specifically, Brexit created policy misalignment, pushing the UK regulators into a capacity vacuum. This led to a transition period of impunity for polluting firms, further catalyzed by accelerating market changes, which led firms with lower environmental compliance to sort into the market. We test our theory with evidence from the oil sector's offshore rigs in the North Sea between 2015 and 2023. A grid-cell analysis of satellite-detected oil spills compares firm behavior in the United Kingdom, European Union, and Norwegian jurisdictions. We first find that, after Brexit, UK waters experienced significantly less environmental protection compared to the EU and Norway. Additionally, we show that the environmental damages following Brexit are not associated to a decrease of UK public salience for environmental protection, but by a new ecosystem of firms that were allowed to reap short-term profits from Brexit.

Paper - Offshore Outlaws: Brexit and Oil Spills in the North Sea, pdf (12,1Mo)

Speaker

Federica Genovese, University of Oxford

She joined St Antony's College and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford in January 2024. Previously, she worked at the Government Department at University of Essex (2014-2023). She has a PhD from University of Konstanz,  a MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a Hon BA University of Toronto. In the past she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and an academic visitor at Nuffield College in Oxford, Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, and LUISS in Rome.

Her research focuses on international and comparative political economy, with particular attention to climate politics and policy, globalisation, redistribution and the politics of crises in Europe, but not exclusively.

In 2024 she received a Philip Leverhulme Prize "aimed at researchers at an early stage of their careers whose work has had international impact and whose future research career is exceptionally promising."

Her writings have been published with Cambridge University Press and in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Organisations, among other outlets. Her work has been supported by various foundations including the British Academy, the Carnegie Trust, the Climate Social Science Network, and the Leverhulme Trust, which awarded her a 2023 Research Leadership Award for a project on the political economy of climate vulnerability.

Chair

Théodore Tallent, Sciences Po, CEE

Discussant

Charlotte Halpern, Sciences Po, CEE