Claudia Zwar

About

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Political Economy of Technology Group at ETH Zürich. I completed my PhD (summa cum laude) at the Hertie School Doctoral Programme in Governance in September 2026. In 2025, I was a Visiting Scholar at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I hold a First Class BA in History and English from the University of Oxford and a Master of Public Policy with Distinction from the Hertie School.

My postdoctoral position is part of the ERC-funded PolTech project, led by Lukas Fesenfeld, on the politicisation of low-carbon technologies. More broadly, my research covers political economy and political behaviour related to the green transition.

Publications

• How do climate institutions matter? Strategic challenges and the policy process effects of climate institutions
  With Jacob Edenhofer and Christian Flachsland
  Journal of European Public Policy (accepted)
  Preprint
  Abstract
  
  Climate institutions, including climate laws and advisory bodies, have proliferated globally. But do they matter? Existing work either analyses quantitatively how these institutions correlate with policy outcomes, like stringency or emissions reductions, or qualitatively examines a single type of institution. Neither strand provides tools to systematically analyse the effects of these institutions on the policymaking process itself. We therefore propose the Climate Institutions Analysis Framework (CIAF), which traces how institutions' formal functions interact with country-specific contextual variables to address 'strategic challenges'. Comparing climate institutions in Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia, we show that they support agenda-setting, increase transparency, signal commitment, and hold governments accountable. Notably, similarly designed institutions can produce divergent effects across countries due to variation in context. By conceptualising a new class of effects and their mechanisms, our framework contributes to debates about policy sequencing amid climate backlash and to comparative analysis of meso-level institutions.
• Sustainability-related impacts of digitalisation on cooperation in global value chains
  Journal of Cleaner Production
  Link
  Abstract
  
  While digitalisation is reconfiguring global value chains (GVCs), the implications for sustainable development, especially in emerging economies, have not yet been thoroughly explored. In order to design more sustainable GVCs this gap must be addressed. This study examines two implications of digitalisation in value chains: first, how polarisation may lead to inequal development; and secondly, whether digital enhanced transparency can be an enabler of companies' environmental management systems (EMS). A survey-based approach is used to compare the developments of companies in China, Brazil and Germany and gain insights into countries that approach digital transformations from different starting points. The results indicate that polarisation tendencies on a country level are not as pronounced as experts predicted. Across all countries, less than 10% of companies reported that collaboration processes are being fully digitalised, while partial digitalisation is more common, ranging from 46% in Brazil (n = 116), to 61% in China (n = 441) and 63% in Germany (n = 104). Polarisation tendencies are stronger among small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) across all countries. As SMEs form the backbone of countries' economies, this should be addressed by global governance. Digital enhanced transparency for EMS is not yet widespread, with only 9% of the German, 3% of the Brazilian and 6% of the Chinese companies integrating production data into their EMS in a fully digital way. The results of this study suggest that the automotive sector would provide a suitable object for future research, as it displays clear differences to other industries.

Working Papers and Ongoing Projects

• Easy wins: green party leverage, climate policy adoption, and stringency
  With Christian Flachsland and Mark Kayser
  Draft available upon request
  Abstract
  
  Theories of democratic responsiveness predict that green parties in power will deliver policies to mitigate climate change. Yet evidence that they do so is limited. We argue that green parties better achieve their policy goals when they have greater leverage in coalition negotiations, based on the necessity of their inclusion to form a government. But because it is possible to adopt new policies without meaningfully increasing their ambition, policy adoption may serve as a political substitute for stringency. Combining a recently invented measure of green party coalition inclusion probability and cross-country data on climate policies, we use panel regression models to show that when green parties have greater leverage, governments adopt more climate policies, but do not necessarily deliver increased policy stringency. Our findings shed light on when and how green parties influence climate policy and provide a party-centred explanation for variation in countries' efforts to address climate change.
• Punishing ambition: potential losers and the political consequences of proposed climate policies
  OSF Link
  Abstract
  
  Why do we observe a backlash against the green transition before it has substantially begun? I examine the political consequences of climate ambition by analysing how voters respond prospectively to proposed climate policies. I argue that 'potential losers' — those vulnerable to decarbonisation but not directly threatened by proposed policies — present a strategic dilemma for pro-climate parties: compensating them may be infeasible or inadvertently signal their vulnerability, yet ignoring them allows rivals to mobilise their opposition. I test this in Australia's 2019 federal election, when one major party campaigned on an ambitious climate agenda. Leveraging heterogeneity in Australia's coal industry, I estimate voters' responses in communities reliant on domestic ('actual losers') and export coal ('potential losers') in a difference-in-differences design. Uncompensated potential losers resoundingly rejected the pro-climate party, while compensated actual losers did not, revealing how heterogeneous exposure and party strategies interact to shape the political feasibility of climate action.
• Economic booms and the electoral success of green parties: cross border evidence from Switzerland's neighbours
  With Tom Arend and Mark Kayser
  Draft available upon request
  Abstract
  
  Scholars have long known that the economy influences the electoral success of incumbent parties. We argue here that the business cycle also influences the support for a specific type of party -- Green parties -- independent of incumbent status. When Switzerland liberalized its labor market in 2002, permitting EU citizens to work in the country, they induced an exogenous income shock in the bordering regions of the neighboring countries. We leverage this natural experiment to test for causal income effects on green party vote share with difference-in-differences models in municipalities near the Swiss border. Individual-level DiD estimates in France confirm a mechanism, showing increased income and support for environmental movements in border areas. Support for green parties has long been stronger among the affluent. We demonstrate a different phenomenon: that short-run income shocks increase support for the Greens, the party family that is most strongly associated with non-material policies.
• Climate or Compute? AI Expansion and Support for Renewable Energy Projects
  With Johannes Brehm
  Draft available upon request
  Abstract
  
  The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and the power-hungry data centres underpinning it is driving a step change in electricity demand in many developed economies. Countries, especially those with ambitious climate targets, will need to build more (renewable) energy infrastructure. How will the local communities required to host this infrastructure respond? We theorise that altering the rationale of renewable energy projects to support AI expansion will change the perceived distributional profile of these projects in ways that influence public support. We pre-register a survey experiment with 3,000 German citizens that tests whether linking a local solar farm to AI expansion reduces support, and whether community compensation provided by either the renewable firm or tech companies behind AI expansion attenuates this penalty. Our study sheds light on how AI is reshaping the politics of the green transition.

Policy and Media

• Christian Flachsland, Jacob Edenhofer, Claudia Zwar. Not a Disaster, but a Missed Opportunity: The Amendment to the Federal Climate Protection Act. Verfassungsblog. English link, German link
• Florence Schulze (2023). Forschende machen Vorschläge für neues Klimaschutzgesetz. [Link]