Does Egalitarian Democracy Boost Environmental Sustainability? An Empirical Test, 1970-2017

Abstract

Many argue that the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation are best addressed by adopting greater egalitarian processes of governance. Greater egalitarian societies apparently contain the required social trust and consensus for making hard choices and tradeoffs for achieving environmental gains. We employ novel data on egalitarian democracy, which measure the equal access of the poor to political power and societal resources, and data covering weak and strong sustainability measured by the “adjusted net savings” and several indicators of atmospheric pollution. The results suggest that greater egalitarian governance reduces weak sustainability and increases the intensity of climate-harming pollution. Regardless of democracy, other measures of social equity, such as the GINI and equal access to health and political resources, increase, not decrease, atmospheric pollution. These results are robust to estimating procedure, several alternative models, and data. While liberté, egalité and fraternité should be pursued for their own intrinsic value, meeting urgent challenges from global warming may require more targeted solutions.

Economic freedom vs. egalitarianism: An empirical test of weak & strong sustainability, 1970–2017

“…Currently, the evidence on the effects of democracy (variously measured) on sustainability and atmospheric pollution is highly mixed, suggesting that it may be due to how democracy is conceptualized and measured (Carlsson & Lundström, 2001; de Soysa et al, 2009; Li & Reuveny, 2006; Midlarsky, 2001; Roeland & de Soysa, 2021; Wurster, 2013). While examining the net effect of economic freedom holding egalitarian democracy constant might be revealing, we might also gain from looking at the conditional effects of both, mainly because egalitarian democracies also exhibit at least some of the core values of economic freedom, such as property rights protections and low corruption.…”