Nicolas Wittstock

University of California, San Diego | UCSD

Why is the US so productive in the invention of clean energy technology, despite relatively weak climate policy, deemed critical to provide incentives for R&D in-vestments? I argue that federal technology policy has actively pursued American clean energy invention with renewed force since the early 2000s. Yet, the related policy has often been inte...

Elections are assumed to provide legitimacy to illiberal regimes. Yet why would obviously unfree elections increase citizens’ perceptions of regime strength or legitimacy? Synthesizing prior arguments, we conclude that many authors assume that fraudulent elections can lead citizens to upwardly adjust their assessment of public regime support even w...

The electoral successes of European far right parties in the 21st century coincided with increased immigration. While some argue these parallel trends suggest immigration sours opinion towards foreigners, a growing literature suggests it is the fluctuation in issue salience which matters. We investigate the overlooked case of Italy, which has long...

What explains the recent rise of populism in Europe? We argue that economic shocks benefit populists when foreign interests influence establishment politicians and lead voters to reject the establishment response. Using a difference-in-differences design with European Social Survey data, we test this theory by comparing countries granted implicitly...

Decades of spectacular economic growth have made China into an important geopolitical player. As Chinese companies improve their capabilities across several areas of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, some US policymakers and pundits lament the country’s ‘unfair trade practices’ and serial ‘theft of American intellectual proper...

President Trump embraced economic populism centered on trade protectionism, restrictions on international capital and technology flows, and subsidies for American raw material providers and domestic manufacturers. More innovative U.S. counties roundly rejected this economic paradigm: voters in innovation clusters of all sizes and across the country...

The electoral successes of European far-right parties in the 2000s coincided with increased immigration. While some argue these parallel trends suggest immigration sours opinion towards foreigners, a growing literature notes that preferences on immigration remain stable while its issue salience fluctuates. We investigate the overlooked case of Ital...