Comparative Politics and Environmental Commitments

Abstract

Economists and Political scientists have suggested for a long time that democracy and the environment are linked. What they did not analyze in detail is if the way in which politicians are elected influences the environment as well. The scope of this paper is to fill this gap. Using high quality data on a cross section of countries, coming from previous studies, we find strong results suggesting that politicians in majoritarian systems are less interested in environmental commitments than those in proportional representations. The consequence is that environmental commitments are lower in the former system than in the latter.

Economists and Political scientists have suggested for a long time that democracy and the environment are linked. What they did not analyze in detail is if the way in which politicians are elected influences the environment as well. The scope of this paper is to fill this gap. Using high quality data on a cross section of countries, coming from previous studies, we find strong results suggesting that politicians in majoritarian systems are less interested in environmental commitments than those in proportional representations. The consequence is that environmental commitments are lower in the former system than in the latter.