Do Democracies Exhibit Stronger International Environmental Commitment? A Cross-country Analysis

Abstract

This article tests the hypothesis that democracies exhibit stronger international environmental commitment than non-democracies, using multivariate econometric techniques. A number of proxy variables are used in lieu of environmental commitment, a non-observable variable. Strong evidence is found that democracies sign and ratify more multilateral environmental agreements, participate in more environmental intergovernmental organizations, comply better with reporting requirements under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora, put a greater percentage of their land area under protections status, are more likely to have a National Council on Sustainable Development in their country and have more environmentally relevant information available than non-democracies. The findings suggest that a spread of democracy around the world will lead to enhanced environmental commitment worldwide. Results are robust with respect to inclusion or exclusion of developed countries in the sample. The use of four different variables for democracy also ensures robustness with respect to the measure of democracy. The strong evidence in favour of a positive link between democracy and environmental commitment stands in contrast to the somewhat weak evidence on such a link between democracy and environmental outcomes. The explanation presumably is that theory predicts a stronger positive link of democracy with environmental commitment than with environmental outcomes.

The Links between Environmental Innovation and Environmental Performance: Evidence for High- and Middle-Income Countries

“…Some studies argue that more democratic governments are more capable of protecting the environment than less or non-democratic governments [33,34], while others assert that democracy leads to excessive resource use by individuals or find a weak relationship between democracy and the environment [35]. To capture the impact of democracy on the environment, this study takes account of the polity as a factor that may affect the environment.…”

Environmental pressure group strength and air pollution: An empirical analysis

“…Most of the empirical literature that analyses the determinants of environmental outcomes focuses on per capita income and, to a lesser extent, democracy, literacy and income inequality (Selden and Song, 1994;Grossman and Krueger, 1995;Panayotou, 1997;Cole et al, 1997;Torras and Boyce, 1998;Barrett and Graddy, 2001;Neumayer, 2002aNeumayer, , 2002bNeumayer, Gates and Gleditsch, 2002). The literature generally consists of reduced form analysis of cross-country time-series data.…”

“…However, a number of empirical studies have found evidence for a positive effect of democracy on environmental commitment or outcomes. Neumayer (2002aNeumayer ( , 2002b and Neumayer et al (2002) find that higher levels of democracy translate into higher levels of government commitment to multilateral environmental agreements and other aspects of environmental protection. Torras and Boyce (1998) find a similar effect in some estimations on air and water pollution levels.…”

Environmentalism, democracy, and pollution control

“…Democratic countries ratified faster the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (Fredriksson and Gaston [20]), the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Neumayer [47]). Neumayer [46] and Neumayer et al [48] also find that more democratic countries put a higher percentage of land area under protection status and comply better with reporting requirements of multilateral environmental agreements. However, this existing empirical literature has ignored the level of democratic participation.…”