How Elections Matter: Theory and Evidence from Environmental Policy

Abstract

This paper explores to what extent secondary policy issues are influenced by electoral incentives. We develop a two dimensional political agency model in which a politician decides on both a frontline policy issue and a secondary policy issue. The model predicts when the incumbent should manipulate the secondary policy to attract voters. We test our model by using panel data on environmental policy choices in the U.S. states. In contrast to the popular view that secondary policies are largely determined by lobbying, we find strong effects of electoral incentives.

Just Rewards? Local Politics and Public Resource Allocation in South India

“…These results are consistent with the political equilibrium being something along the lines of Proposition 2 with an elite benefiting from control of public resources in unreserved seats. 25 It is, however, interesting that political opportunism does, in column (3), appear to be lower when politicians are more educated. Finally, in column (4) we show that living in the Pradhan's village does not affect a household's propensity to receive a BPL card.…”

Coding Error or Statistical Embellishment? The Political Economy of Reporting Climate Aid

“…While the literature clearly suggests that the public's ecological preferences are positively correlated with actual environmental policy making (List & Sturm, 2006;Knill, Debus, & Heichel, 2010), this is less obvious for overcoding. For instance, voters with environmental preferences may not only value climate related aid, but may also be more critical observers of the government's environmental policies, so that over-coding becomes a risky business.…”

“…Or the German DAC delegation responding to a 50-page draft of the DAC Peer Review by a 70-page fax with requests for "factual changes" briefly before the 1998 general elections? A number of academic studies also suggest the relevance of voters' aid and/or environmental preferences for government policy (see e.g., List & Sturm, 2006;Milner & Tingley, 2010).…”

“…In line with most of the literature on the political economy of environmental policy making, we do not distinguish between the administrative side and the political side of government (see e.g., Blanke, 2002;Felder & Schleiniger, 2002;Hicks et al, 2008;List & Sturm, 2006). To simplify the exposition, we rather imagine an aid administration headed by the relevant minister for development cooperation (reflecting the political side of the aid administration) as a single agent.…”

Are Environmental Taxes Affected by Legislatures` Ideological Positions?

“…This new political culture has affected the electoral struggles among political parties by highlighting the relevance of previously secondary issues such as the environment. For instance, List & Sturm (2006) finds for the United States that environmental policy is largely influenced by electoral incentives. Consequently, the prominence of environmental issues has been increased by the weakening of the class voting and the rise of issue voting (Clark, 2001).…”