Lina Skoglund

Photo of Lina Skoglund

Hi! I am currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics at Princeton University and 2024-2025 Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences. I study state-society interactions, state-building, and backlash against environmental policy with a focus on France.

My job market paper examines how an incumbent can effectively overthrow a democratic regime to stay in power and highlights the role of centralized communication infrastructure on the success of a regime takeover. The article uses a natural experiment based on Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in 1851 France and shows that control over information flows during the coup enabled the swift transition to autocracy by deterring the coordination of the opposition.

In addition, my book project, Voices in the Wilderness, explores local mobilization against wildlife policy and examines how exposure to environmental policies affect perceptions of the state in rural France.

Prior to Princeton, I received a BA and a Master’s degree in Economics and Public Policy (Summa Cum Laude) from Sciences Po Paris. I am advised by Carles Boix, Rafaela Dancygier, Andreas Wiedemann and Saad Gulzar. I am affiliated with the Research Group in Political Economy and the Initiatives on Contemporary European Affairs program.

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Working Papers & Work in Progress

  1. The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed [Abstract] [Lastest version]  
  2. Voices in the wilderness? The spatial distribution of the costs of environmental policy and anti-state mobilization [Abstract] [Draft available on request]  
  3. When Modernization Backfires: understanding the determinants of the unlikely alliance of local landed elites and the rural poor against the central state in XIXth century France [Abstract]