Christina Toenshoff

Christina is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science with a focus on International Political Economy. Her main research interests are interest group politics, climate and trade policy, and European politics.

Christina’s book-length thesis project examines how the emergence of social responsibility influences the democratic governance of capitalism. Specifically, she explores how firms adjust their lobbying practices when they face pressure from consumers and investors. Using the empirical example of climate policy in the European Union, her dissertation argues that there are potential tensions between companies’ inside lobbying and their outside reputations.

Her dissertation further shows that companies react to this tension by shifting their more unpopular lobbying positions into business associations to avoid public scrutiny. She examines the policy implications of this strategic adjustment by testing how policymakers react to diverging information from associations and firms from the same sector, arguing that individual lobbying can have an outsized influence on the policy process by undermining the credibility of associations.

In a second set of projects, which centers on the political economy of energy transitions, Christina explores the role of compensation policies on public acceptance of the green energy transition and the geo-political implications of changing patterns in energy trade.

Christina’s work is supported by the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Stanford Graduate Research Opportunities Grant. She is also a member of the 2022 International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network cohort.

Before coming to Stanford, Christina completed an MA in International Affairs and International Economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University. After her BA, she also studied Japanese in Fukuoka, Japan.