Climate Justice Now

Marwege, Rebecca, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer, eds.  2026.  Climate Justice Now:  Crossing Disciplines to Combat Our Planetary Crisis.  New York:  Columbia University Press.

Available at Columbia University Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

Climate change is not only an environmental crisis but also a catalyst for worsening socioeconomic inequalities, leading to widespread calls for “climate justice.” Even though this term has become increasingly common, there remains no universally accepted definition. This challenge is compounded by the limitations of traditional scholarly frameworks, which struggle to encompass the dynamic and pervasive impact of the climate crisis across global, national, and local levels. The scope of the crisis requires ethical, social, and political considerations alongside scientific and environmental insights in order to shape equitable responses by states and societies.

This multidisciplinary book offers a comprehensive exploration of debates on climate justice across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Synthesizing these divergent approaches, it develops a new conceptual framework that transcends disciplinary divides, providing a deeper and richer understanding of climate justice. Contributors make an urgent case that climate justice must be centered within and across disciplines, creating a roadmap for multidisciplinary research and pedagogy on the climate crisis. Featuring a wide range of voices and actionable recommendations, this timely book illuminates how scholarship on climate change can become a call to action.

Coverage in Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism Climate Change Series, Columbia University Society of Fellows Climate Change Conversations.

This book grew out of the Columbia Climate School's "Decarbonization, Climate Resilience, and Climate Justice" interdisciplinary network that I Co-Directed from 2021—2024 (additional information can be found here).

Book Chapters

Marwege, Rebecca, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer.  2026.  “When Natural Scientists, Social Scientists, and Humanists Meet to Discuss Climate Justice.”  In Climate Justice Now:  Crossing Disciplines to Combat Our Planetary Crisis, eds. Rebecca Marwege, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer, 12-42.  New York:  Columbia University Press.

Marwege, Rebecca, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer.  2026.  “The Elusive Challenge of Climate Justice and a Call to Action!”  In Climate Justice Now:  Crossing Disciplines to Combat Our Planetary Crisis, eds. Rebecca Marwege, Nikhar Gaikwad, and Joerg Schaefer, 315-336.  New York:  Columbia University Press.


Identity Politics and Economic Policy

Gaikwad, Nikhar.  Identity Politics and Economic Policy.  In Preparation for Submission.  Book Conference held in 2020.

How does identity politics impact political conflict over economic policy?  Political entrepreneurs in multi-ethnic societies commonly rely on both cultural mobilization and economic protectionism to garner votes, yet few theories explain how politicians' choices along one dimension influence their actions on the other.  I present a formal model of political competition in culturally divided societies to explicate the link between identity politics and politics over economic policymaking.  I show that both brands of politics are symptomatic of the same strategic tradeoff faced by office-seeking politicians.  My key insight is that incentives to engage in identity politics dampen motivations to win support using economic policy.  By triggering identity in the electoral arena, politicians can boost their popularity among voters who value identity.  But the “identity card” polarizes political preferences among groups mobilized on identity, which in turn makes voters in these communities relatively less responsive to marginal changes in economic policy.  Politicians thus face electoral motivations to fashion economic policies toward members of other identity groups.  My focus on the linkages between identity and economic mobilization generates insights that upturn many expectations about who gets what from the state in multi-cultural democracies.  Conventional wisdom holds that political entrepreneurs advance the interests of the ethnic groups they represent, and that economic coalitions that are concentrated with majority ethnic group members are more likely to obtain redistributive economic policies.  I show, by contrast, that identity politics incentivize politicians to cater to the economic interests of minorities, and that industries with larger shares of majority group workers receive fewer preferential policies because politicians are more likely to court voters in these groups by appealing to their identity.

I test the empirical implications of this theoretical argument using multiple methods and sources of data.  I begin by conducting a series of paired survey experiments on large samples of voters, politicians, and importing and exporting firms in India to interrogate the theoretical micro-foundations of my formal model.  Evidence from a number of historical case studies illustrate the key mechanisms behind my argument and the broader validity of its claims.  The centerpiece of my empirical analysis is an examination of the relationship between the ethnic distribution of workers within industries and trade policy outcomes.  I introduce an original dataset of annual, product-level import tariffs spanning 75 years and 5,000 product lines in India that I collected over several years of fieldwork, and use this data to probe my theory's predictions.  My analyses reveal a qualitatively meaningful association linking the presence of minority group workers in an industry's workforce and the ability of that industry to receive preferential trade policy.  Strikingly, this relationship is evident in specific and symmetrical ways for both import competing and exporting industries, in line with theoretical predictions about their policy preferences surrounding international trade.  Furthermore, I show that the relationship between the ethnic profiles of industries and economic policy outcomes is evident only when identity politics become salient in the electoral arena, a finding that corroborates key insights from my theoretical argument.  Finally, I probe the broader applicability of my theory by evaluating its predictions using a different policy measure in India, as well as similar trade policy outcomes in Brazil and the United States during the early twentieth century.  Taken together this book provides a new theoretical framework to explain how politicians make economic policies in electoral settings that are dominated by identity politics, and helps shed light on how the sharp rise in identity politics in recent decades has systematically influenced regulatory capture in culturally divided democracies.

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the James G. March Award for “outstanding dissertation in any field of Political Science” by Yale University, the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation by the American Political Science Association's Democracy and Autocracy Section, and an Honorable Mention for the Mancur Olson Prize for Best Dissertation by the American Political Science Association's Political Economy Section.

Listen to the Scope Conditions Podcast (with Alan Jacobs and Yang-Yang Zhou, Episode 1.4) on the manuscript here.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction:  Two Brands of Politics
2. The Politician's Strategic Tradeoff
3. Experimental Tests of Theoretical Mechanisms
4. Linking Identity Politics to Economic Policy
5. Evaluating Implications for Economic Policy
6. Different Policies, Different Settings
7. Conclusion:  Identity and Policy in an Era of Populism