PhD thesis defence by Nina-Lopez Uroz
This thesis investigates why and how governments pursue climate policies, with high distributional costs and political risks, in the building sector - a politically sensitive area that directly affects citizens, involves powerful interest groups, and accounts for almost half of the energy consumed in the EU. Existing accounts in comparative political economy often emphasise either electoral incentives or interest group pressure to explain policy change, but such approaches in isolation are insufficient to account for these outcomes. By adopting a policy cycle perspective, this thesis traces how the relative influence of electoral politics and interest groups shifts across agenda-setting, policy adoption, and implementation. This framework also provides a more detailed analysis of the role of agency, particularly the role of climate policy entrepreneurs, in shaping reform trajectories and durability.
The analysis draws on comparative case studies of climate command-and-control regulations in France and Germany, using process tracing. Findings show that green coalitions led by NGOs and think tanks are crucial for placing specific solutions to the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector on the agenda and for shaping policy design. Yet ambitious reforms are only adopted when elected politicians who champion climate action hold influence in government and act as climate political entrepreneurs. During implementation, reforms face resistance from incumbent interests and other elected politicians, which results in preventive erosion. Distributional effects are central throughout: who bears the costs and the benefits shapes coalition dynamics and determines the political viability of reforms.
All in all, this dissertation contributes to the fields of comparative political economy, climate politics and public policy by adopting a processual approach to policy change and unpacking the mechanisms through which climate policies with significant costs are enacted, to then be eroded during implementation. More broadly, the study contributes a socio-political account of climate policymaking that highlights the mechanisms through which democratic capitalist systems can, under certain conditions, break free from their carbon lock-in.
Nina Lopez-Uroz is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute (EUI). Her PhD project bridges comparative political economy, climate politics and policy studies to analyse the drivers of climate policy expansion in housing, especially stringent regulatory (or 'command-and-control') measures aimed at heat decarbonisation and building renovation in France and Germany. During her PhD, she also pursued collaborative research projects on other aspects of environmental politics, such as climate education, drought adaptation, and agricultural transitions. She also conducted two visiting stays at Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics and at the Hertie School of Governance’s Centre for Sustainability in Berlin. Starting October 2025, Nina is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, in the Contested Ecologies research group, where she is working on her project titled Greening the Home .