Greener Pastures? A Labor Market Theory of Climate Governance

Climate governance requires access to climate experts: individuals with specialized knowledge of decarbonization and climate science. Here we model climate governance as the function of a competition between the state and private sector for a scarce pool of climate experts. Governments seek experts to develop and implement climate policies. Firms seek experts to affect policy choice, skirt enforcement, and measure climate risks to commercial interests. As firm interest in climate grows, the government’s ability to attract experts declines, making it more reliant on the private sector for climate governance. To support this argument, we measure private sector demand for experts with unique data on U.S. job postings, paired with administrative data on government bureaucrats and procurement. Our findings offer a novel labor-based account of climate politics, contributing to the study of labor markets in political science, the sources of bureaucratic expertise, and the net effects of corporate social responsibility.