International Environmental Agreements and Strategic Voting*

Abstract

This paper explores the outcome of an international environmental agreement when the governments are elected by their citizens. It also considers a voter's incentives for supporting candidates who are less green than she is. In the extreme case of ''global'' pollution, the elected politicians pay no attention to the environment, and the resulting international agreement is totally ineffective. Moreover, if governments cannot negotiate and have to decide noncooperatively (and voters are aware of this), the elected politicians can be greener, ecological damage can be lower and the median voter's payoff can be higher than in the case with bargaining.

Strategic Voting for Noncooperative Environmental Policies in Open Economies

“…He constructed a two-country model where citizens in each country strategically elect a politician who sets and imposes an emission tax on its domestic firms, and showed that citizens may have an incentive to elect a policymaker who is more concerned about the environment than they are. Contrary to the results of Buchholz et al (2005), strategic voting may mitigate the race to the bottom in the noncooperative environmental tax setting. However, Roelfsema's analysis only considers the case where firms produce and sell homogenous goodsà la Cournot and policymakers implement an emission tax as a means of regulation.…”

“…The proposition is closely related to the result of "isolatinist" scenario in Buchholz et al (2005). In the scenario where governments noncooperatively determine their output of domestic products, they show that strategic voting results in a government that assigns less weight to the environment than the median voter.…”

“…In this framework, he shows that the median-voter will tend to prefer a policymaker who lays less emphasis on environmental pollution than he or she does, and overall, the outcome will be inferior to the one derived in the absence of delegation (or election). Subsequently, Buchholz et al (2005) construct a model where each government that is democratically elected by its citizens decides its outputs of environmentally-harmful products cooperatively or noncooperatively, and compare the outcome under a cooperative policy (an international environmental agreement) with that under a noncooperative policy. They also show that voters strategically choose their policymaker who is less eco-friendly than the voters themselves in both cases.…”

The political economy of international environmental agreements: a survey

“…For instance, Michaelowa and Greiner (1996), Carraro and Siniscalco (1998), Michaelowa (1998), Congleton (2001), Vogt (2002), and Böhringer and Vogt (2004) focus on political processes within a country. The studies by Haffoudhi (2005a and2005b), Buchholz et al (2005), Altamirano-Cabrera et al (2007) and Roelfsma (2007) explore political economy approaches to IEA design and stability.…”

Economic Targets and Loss‐Aversion in International Environmental Cooperation

“…4 Buchholz et al (2005) provide a theoretical examination of the implications of the electoral process for IEAs, and find significant adverse effects. Based on empirical evidence, Cazals and Sauquet (2015) show that political leaders' levels of commitment to IEAs differ with the timing of elections.…”