As global efforts to confront the climate crisis intensify, policymakers and advocates are searching for more effective approaches to accelerate just energy transitions and advance public welfare. Green industrial policy (GIP) is emerging as a crucial part of the solution—yet realizing its full potential depends on navigating complex political realities as much as technical challenges.
Leila Kazemi’s new working paper, “Green Industrial Policy: Grappling with Political Economy to Improve Performance,” offers a valuable roadmap for understanding how power, interests, and institutions shape the fate of GIP around the world. Drawing on diverse international experiences, Kazemi highlights why political analysis must go hand in hand with innovation and investment if green policies are to work for people and planet.
Read the full paper below to explore fresh insights and practical strategies for building more robust, equitable climate action through politically savvy industrial policy.
You can also download the paper here.
Leila Kazemi is a political economist and governance expert who works with numerous organizations to support more politically savvy and impactful work on investment governance. She is a Senior Fellow at CCSI and previously led the organization's work on the Politics of Extractive Industries, a multi-year project grappling with the ways in which power, interests, incentives, and characteristics of political systems shape how extractive industry projects are developed, their ultimate outcomes, and the fate of governance interventions designed to improve these.
As a long-time independent consultant, Leila provides research, analysis, policy advice, and program development support to a range of organizations including the World Bank, Natural Resource Governance Institute, Publish What You Pay, Ford Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Foundation for the UN Global Compact, Purpose, Kofi Annan Foundation, and Carbon War Room.
She holds a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and received her Bachelor's and Doctorate degrees in Political Science from Columbia University.