In 1990, the United States passed groundbreaking amendments to the Clean Air Act to combat acid rain. This legislation has saved countless lives, spurred innovation, and helped lay the groundwork for more ambitious climate policy. But as one might suspect, it was a major legislative battle. And one part largely ignored in the literature on this momentous legislative achievement was a proposal from the infamous Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. He and a group of lawmakers fought for substantial funding for coal workers that would be put out of work by the acid rain law. We tell the story of this legislative battle, which highlights themes discussed in the book. We then contrast the Appalachian coal transition with Germany's coal phase-out, including how their political and social systems facilitate or frustrate transitions.

In examining the effect of Chinese talent-attracting programs launched by the Chinese government, with few exceptions, studies have rarely assessed these programs empirically and pertinently. We intend to fill the gap by assessing an important central government program – the Youth Thousand Talents Program – in Chapter Five. We start with proposing a transnational migration matrix of the academics to clarify the dynamic mechanism of achieving an academic brain gain at the high end. The transnational migration matrix suggests that the academics with high ability have competitiveness in both overseas and domestic academic job markets and can especially enjoy a higher salary and academic reputation in the host (overseas) academic job market due to the more mature mechanism of academic evaluation relative to their home country. The results show that some scholars whose last employer’s academic ranking is among the world’s Top 100 have stronger willingness to return. Compared to scholars with an overseas tenure-track position, those with a tenure position or a permanent position tended to stay overseas, the rate of their staying abroad increased with ages.

This chapter presents the background and motivations of the book, clarifies the questions it tries to answer and explains its organizational structure.

The world needs to transition to clean energy. But this massive transformation runs up against political obstacles. Local governments, national political parties, and corporations are obstructing the clean energy transition. And yet there is bipartisan support for communities on the front lines of the energy transition to receive compensation and investment. This chapter introduces the idea that these policies face credibility challenges and questions about local economic benefits. Next, we connect this discussion around the climate impasse with earlier economic transitions due to globalization, automation, national parks, and environmental protections. Finally, we argue that top-down approaches miss these credibility concerns. Instead, a bottom-up process of listening to impacted communities is crucial to unlock the climate impasse.

As the Middle East became an economically underdeveloped region, its entrepreneurs did not form movements to constrain either rulers or clerics. They did not bring about liberalization through organizational innovations that strengthened them politically. A basic reason is that, until the transplant of modern economic institutions from Europe, the Middle East’s private enterprises remained small and ephemeral. These characteristics precluded sustained coalitions representing business interests. A further consequence was the failure to institute political checks and balances of the type that made European rulers submit to rule of law. Several elements of the Islamic institutional complex contributed to keeping Middle Eastern enterprises structurally stagnant until the 1800s. Most critically, Islam’s partnership rules allowed partners to pull out at will, and its inheritance system hindered capital accumulation. The upshot is that enterprises did not experience operational challenges of the type that would have stimulated organizational innovations. Among the innovations that did not emerge indigenously are banks, chambers of commerce, business publications, stock exchanges, and formal insurance markets. Their long absence contributed to keeping private economic actors politically weak. It also compounded the endemic weaknesses of civil society.

Do people think credibility challenges exist? They do. This chapter presents evidence from interviews and surveys that show how credibility challenges are present in the minds of the national public, local policymakers, and residents of fossil fuel communities. Our surveys include nationally representative samples of the United States, local elected officials, and county fairgoers in Appalachia. People are concerned that the government will fail to follow through on commitments. Furthermore, companies and investors share these concerns, which can lead to underinvestment in clean energy.

China’s rapid growth of R&D expenditure has attracted wide attention from the international scientific and policy communities. We try to open the “black box” of China’s central R&D expenditure based on an analytical framework of “funding−performing” in Chapter Four. Specifically, the chapter solves a major mystery regarding China’s central government’s R&D expenditure – who spends how much on what. By using data released by central government agencies with mission in S&T and innovation between 2011 and 2020, we find that the allocation of the central R&D expenditure has become decentralized and diversified, which has posed new challenges for China’s R&D budget management. Much of the public money has financed scientific research, but the nation’s overall R&D funding has been oriented toward development research, thus pointing to a possibility that China’s efforts to build an enterprise-centered innovation system may lack a solid scientific foundation. The findings are helpful for understanding China’s S&T budgeting process and spending patterns as well as funding structure.

Every Islamic waqf that adhered to its deed eventually became dysfunctional because of unanticipated changes in conditions. But not all waqfs were managed rigidly. Relaxed legal interpretations enabled waqf caretakers to depart, albeit within limits, from the founder’s instructions. But courts had the final say on whether a caretaker was complying with the deed and, insofar as he was not, whether his exceptions were justified. A judge could rule that the founder, were he alive, would have authorized certain changes that the deed did not explicitly allow. Alternatively, he could treat them as incompatible with the waqf’s spirit. He was thus the arbiter of what resource reallocations were legal. Unsurprisingly, this judicial privilege was abused. Judges commonly withheld permission for a managerial or financial adjustment until they were bribed. So central was the waqf to the region’s premodern economy that efforts to transgress its rules promoted a culture of corruption. Our primary interest here lies in the political consequences. In societies with rampant corruption, individuals tend to solve their problems with the state through bribery and reciprocal favors. They find personal solutions easier than trying to form coalitions with others facing similar challenges. Civil society suffers.

Do our solutions to create credibility make a difference? Yes. This chapter and the rest of the book show how support for a clean energy transition increases when lawmakers make policies more credible and provide local economic benefits. We draw on various surveys and interviews to test our solutions for how credibility can be enhanced. For example, we demonstrate how laws rather than reversible promises can enhance credibility and garner more support. We also show how revealing the national consensus behind assistance to transitioning regions can reduce expectations of policy reversal. We also feature interviews with a range of energy firm executives and lobbyists, which complement our surveys of members of the public and local elected officials.

Among the requirements of a liberal order is the ability to pursue collective goals through enduring private organizations. Such organizations contribute to political checks and balances, which sustain individual freedoms. In the Islamic Middle East, a possible starting point for autonomous nonstate organizations was the Islamic waqf, a trust that an individual formed under Islamic law to provide designated social services in perpetuity. Waqfs came to control vast resources. They might have used their enormous wealth to constrain the state and advance the freedoms of their constituents. The resulting decentralization of power could have placed the Middle East on the road to liberalization and perhaps also democratization. However, despite their immense wealth, waqfs remained politically powerless. A key reason is that they were governed according to their deeds, not the preferences of their caretakers or beneficiaries. In these respects, Islamic waqfs differed from European corporations, which were self-governing organizations enjoying legal personhood. In the Middle East, waqfs supplied services that the corporation provided in Western Europe. For instance, whereas churches and universities operated as corporations, mosques and madrasas (Islamic colleges) were financed by waqfs. This institutional difference contributed to the interregional divergence in political patterns.

Zakat returned to Middle Eastern political discourse in the 1930s, through modern Islamism. It became one of two concrete initiatives distinguishing an Islamic modern economy from economies ostensibly corrupted by secularists and colonialists. The other was Islamic finance. In both cases, the focus was more on the symbolism of Islamizing a secularized sphere than on solving actual economic problems. Islamism tacitly stripped zakat of all but one of its original functions: poverty alleviation. Sidelining zakat’s role in public finance and the protection of property rights, it frittered away golden opportunities to draw from Islam’s rich history universal lessons for economic progress and rule of law. Focusing on the functions that made zakat a pillar of Islam would have initiated a dialogue with secularists inclined to dismiss Islam as a source of backwardness. A similar scenario has played out in relation to Islamic finance. Nowhere has a categorical ban on interest, which is absent from the Quran anyway, been enforced. In any case, it is unfeasible. In making Islamic finance seem interest-free through euphemisms and accounting tricks, Islamism reduces economic transparency and institutionalizes dishonesty. Weakening rule of law, it also compounds mistrust.

This chapter explains the logic behind the choice of institutions that the book highlights. A liberal order is impossible without the capacity to form organizations able to act on behalf of private constituencies. Apart from providing shared goods, private organizations restrain entities capable of repression, including the state. Hence, a section of the book is devoted to exploring the political effects of Islamic and modern waqfs. Whereas the former played key roles in keeping civil society anemic, the latter is now invigorating civic life. Religious repression has been ubiquitous in the Middle East. In inducing preference and knowledge falsification in broad domains, it conceals doubts about policies promoted in the name of religion. In the process, it impoverishes and distorts public discourse. For these reasons alone, religious freedoms are also essential to liberal governance. Economic freedoms are pivotal because they shape political incentives and capacities. Private property rights, the freedom to invest, and predictable taxation are among the determinants of private political capacities. So are characteristics of the available forms of economic organization. Institutions that limit the scale, longevity, and complexity of Middle Eastern enterprises have reduced the political reach of private economic actors.