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Miriam Pollock

Miriam Pollock

Supervisors: Dr Ben Noble and Prof Alena Ledeneva  

Email: miriam.pollock.21@ucl.ac.uk 

Present status: MPhil Candidate; UCL Research Excellence Scholarship award holder 

Working title of thesis: Taking sustainability unseriously: The impact of business power and regime type on collaborative governance for urban sustainability

Research: What political factors cause urban sustainability failures? With urbanisation rapidly accelerating into the 21st century, cities are now responsible for the majority of global energy demand, resource use, and carbon emissions. Failures to achieve or progress toward urban sustainability thus represent significant obstacles to global sustainable development. However, despite increasing attention on urban sustainability, most research focuses on successful case studies rather than those cities which are struggling.

My research addresses this gap by looking at cities which are struggling to improve their level of sustainability despite investing in sustainability initiatives. I hypothesise that two factors, corporate power and regime type, have a significant impact on urban sustainability outcomes. In the large-N quantitative section of my mixed-methods project, I test the effects of each of these factors on sustainability outcomes. 

These factors are often mediated through collaborative governance, which scholars and policymakers alike tend to champion as a best practice for urban sustainability. My project problematises this idea by showing how collaborative governance is highly susceptible to distortion when power asymmetries exist between collaborative actors. I do this through in-depth case studies of three cities (Norilsk, Russia, Kiruna, Sweden, and Astana, Kazakhstan). 

Research interests: Sustainability, UN Sustainable Development Goals, authoritarian and non-democratic regimes, governance, public policy, state capture, Russia, environmental politics 

Research Centre Affiliation: UCL Centre for New Economic Transitions; Politics and Sociology Seminar Series; Russian Studies Seminar Series 

UCL Profile: Miriam Pollock