Matias Spektor: 'Climate Change Politics in the Global South' (Princeton RWO)

On October 8, 2022, the Reimagining World Order (RWO) research community at Princeton University (PIIRS) hosted Professor Matias Spektor (School of International Relations at FGV in Brazil and Visiting Fellow at PIIRS) for this year's second meeting of its World Order Colloquium. The existential threat of climate change is stoking old tensions between the West and the Global South. Can the United States and Europe target climate rogues without inciting nationalist backlash and defiance? Can leaders from the developing world avoid domestic political costs for environmental destruction as the major powers embrace a new and more ambitious environmental agenda? Professor Spektor's talk will draw on survey experiments fielded in Brazil during the Bolsonaro administration to provide answers and advance a new research program.

Matias Spektor is professor and founder of the School of International Relations at FGV in Brazil. He is the author of several books and academic articles on how grand strategy, international security, and transnational political violence connect the US-led order to the Global South. He is now developing a research program to integrate insights from Comparative Politics and International Relations to make sense of the new politics of climate change in the Global South. In 2022-23, Professor Spektor is a visiting scholar with the Reimagining World Order research community at Princeton.