Democracy, Bureaucratic Capacity and Environmental Quality

This paper explores the link between democracy, bureaucratic capacity and environmental quality. While many previous empirical studies traditionally have focused on either the democracy or bureaucratic capacity side of the story, they failed to acknowledge that both these factors in their interplay determine the delivery of public policy outcomes. This paper suggests that to account for the functioning of both the input and output side of the political system, democracy and bureaucratic capacity have to be considered in interaction. By employing the between estimator, the study empirically tests this claim on one of the major environmental problems— air pollution. The results show that the effect of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions is indeed contingent on the levels of bureaucratic capacity: Democracies emit less only if their bureaucratic capacity is high. If bureaucratic capacity is low, democracies do not do any better than authoritarian regimes

Necessary but not Sustainable? The Limits of Democracy in Achieving Environmental Sustainability

The world today faces a number of environmental problems that are both severe and urgent. Finding effective solutions is one of the top priorities for the international community, with at least half of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals relating either directly or indirectly to reaching environmental sustainability. The question is: How to reach these goals? Environmental problems pose a complex dilemma for decision-makers. They have low visibility, a slow response time to policy interventions and often require multi-pronged policy solutions that are sufficiently funded, supported and rigorously enforced. Yet, they are rarely the first priority for voters. Solutions to environmental problems therefore rely on long-term vision and commitments, appropriate expertise, as well as institutions that can secure compliance from all the relevant actors. This dissertation looks at the political institutions that, it is argued, make countries more likely to commit to and reach environmental sustainability goals. It revisits previous findings indicating that democratic institutions are more conducive to securing strong environmental performance. Democracy, which shapes the rules of preference aggregation and thus influences environmental decision-making and policy adoption, does not necessarily guarantee that these policies will be successfully implemented. This dissertation argues that the performance of democracies in achieving environmental sustainability depends on the quality of government, which, broadly, encompasses the absence of corruption, high rule of law and high bureaucratic capacity. Quality of government shapes the implementation of public policies, but it may also affect the incentives of decision-makers in environmental policy-making. This dissertation hypothesizes that democracy and quality of government interact in the production of environmental sustainability outcomes. The five articles included in the dissertation test this overarching hypothesis on four key Sustainable Development Goals related to environmental sustainability: the reduction of CO2 emissions to avert climate change, preparedness for natural disasters that may arise as a result of climate change, the provision of energy, and the provision of clean water. The results are consistent across the studies and show that more democracy is only beneficial for environmental sustainability outcomes when high quality of government is in place. However, when quality of government is low, democracies tend to underperform, doing no better or doing even worse than authoritarian regimes. Corruption, weak public administration, and lack of rule of law undermine incentives for and the credibility of policy efforts, and obstruct the implementation of public policies related to environmental sustainability, thus limiting democratic governments’ ability to act in the long-term interests of the public

Vulnerability of Small Island Development States. Does good governance help?

Small island states have in recent decades been identified as particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. Violent winds, floods, and draughts have had severe consequences for millions of people and currently present an increasingly significant challenge for development and poverty alleviation in small islands. However, although islands tend to have similar geographical features, natural hazards produce widely different outcomes in different island states, indicating great variation in resilience. While some islands seem to cope and adapt fairly well, others suffer tremendously. That is the impact of natural hazards of the same physical magnitude ranges from going more or less unnoticed or causing only small disturbances to resulting in severe catastrophes. The overall objective of this paper is to explore the suggested sources of this variation further. More specifically, with the point of departure in theories about how institutions and social contracts affect collective action and adaptive capacities, this paper sets out to investigate how political institutions such as democracy, corruption, and government effectiveness impact the overall resilience of island states. While claims over the importance of institutions are well abound in the literature, there is a serious lack of systematic empirical accounts testing the validity of such claims. This shortcoming is addressed by this study’s quantitative, time series cross-sectional analysis using data from the International Disaster Risk database and the Quality of Government dataset

“Gimme Shelter”: The Role of Democracy and Institutional Quality in Disaster Preparedness

Natural disasters cause suffering for millions of people around the globe every year and as climate change unfolds the likelihood of natural catastrophes is increasing. While weather shocks, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods are beyond our control, a governments’ capacity to protect populations largely determines the degree of human suffering in disasters. Democracies, with freedom of speech, broad public participation and representation, are believed to protect their populations better than non-democratic regimes. However, democratic institutions are insufficient for securing protection from disasters in contexts of corruption, poor planning and public administration incompetence. We argue that the effect of democracy on the extent of human suffering in disasters is contingent on the ability of governments to implement their tasks or the quality of implementing institutions. We test this interaction hypothesis using time series cross-sectional data from the Varieties of Democracy project, the Quality of Government dataset and data from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The results show that more democracy is associated with fewer people being affected by natural disasters only in settings where institutional quality is high. When institutional quality is low, more people seem to suffer in democracies than in authoritarian states.This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems

Democracy, Quality of Government, and Public Goods Provision: The Case of Water Management

A large strand of research has argued that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods to the general population. However, there is a large variation in how the existing democratic regimes perform, implying that democratic institutions are not sufficient to secure people’s wellbeing. The aim of this paper is to explore the sources of this variation. With the point of departure in theories on democracy, quality of government, and public goods provision, we posit that the way democracies perform in the delivery of public goods to their citizens depends on the presence of good quality institutions that shape the implementation of public policies. Using a mixed method design, this paper both empirically tests this proposition and offers an in-depth investigation into the mechanisms behind the interdependent relationship. In the first stage of our analysis, we explicitly test the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government on public goods provision using water quality as an example of such public good. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where quality of government is high. In contexts with low governmental quality, more democracy even seems to be associated with higher water pollution. In the second stage of our analysis, we proceed with examining the mechanisms of how poor quality of government disrupts the positive effects of democracy on people’s access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova

Environmental protection in authoritarian regimes: Investigating the role of pluralism.

When and how do authoritarian states secure environmental protection? Answering thisquestion is critical given that over half of the world’s population currently live in suchregimes. Furthermore, the majority of non-democracies are concentrated in the GlobalSouth, which is also home to some of world’s greatest environmental challenges. Muchof what we know is informed by the case of China and understands environmental pro-tection as a strategy for constructing and maintaining regime legitimacy. Much less isknown about why the degree of environmental protection varies within authoritarian set-tings. This is a critical oversight since environmental issues are by their nature local.As such, understanding when and how governments engage in environmental protectionrequires studying the incentives facing local officials. We help fill this knowledge gap withan empirical study of subnational variation in environmental protection in the author-itarian regime of Vietnam. Studying a single country allows us to isolate key featuresof political institutions while holding a number of other factors constant, strengtheningour ability to draw credible inferences. Specifically, we study the role of pluralism at thelocal (district) level, and consider how the degree of pluralism relates to two key environ-mental outcomes: air and water quality. While pluralism has the potential to promoteenvironmental protection by enhancing scrutiny of government actors, pluralism can alsoundermine commitments to pro-environment policies, given their contentious nature. Weanalyze data from Vietnam’s 208 districts and find that greater pluralism, measured bythe extent of civil society activity, electoral competition, and the degree of (corrupt) busi-ness influence is associated with worse environmental outcomes. These finding call intoquestion received wisdom about the benefits of participation for sustainable developmentand highlight the importance of developing contextually appropriate strategies

Are Carbon Dioxide Emissions Decoupled from GDP Growth in Well-functioning Democracies?

Empirical studies of the relationship between GDP per capita and country-level CO2 emissions tend to focus on the direct effect of per capita GDP growth, rarely taking political institutions into consideration. This paper introduces theoretical insights from environmental political science research, which suggests that CO2 emissions models would gain explanatory leverage if moderators gauging political institutions were considered. We test these theories by estimating the potentially moderating effects of democracy, corruption, veto points and players, and civil society activity. Our results suggest a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, which is barely affected by any variations in political and institutional factors. The only significant moderator in our analysis is bicameralism in democratic, low corrupt countries, which generates a stronger effect of per capita GDP growth at low levels of GDP per capita. Our analysis thus lends rigor to studies in environmental economics that find a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, and does not provide support for theories common in environmental political science research.Please note that the results are different in the final version of the paper. When citing, please refer to the final version of the manuscript available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.11.014V-Dem data collection was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. V-Dem performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden, SNIC 2016/1-382 and 2017/1-68. V-Dem Institute specifically acknowledges the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating the use of their respective systems

Environmental commitments in different types of democracies: The role of liberal, social-liberal, and deliberative politics

Ever since the recognition of ongoing, human-induced, large-scale environmental degradation, from the early 1960s onwards, the scholarly community has looked at democracy with mixed feelings. Some assert, quite openly, that democracy is devastating for the environmental performance of countries, some claim the opposite, while yet other scholars suggest that democratic models other than liberal democracy may offer a route forwards, towards a sustainable society. Both political theorists and empirical social scientists add fuel to this debate, and neither side has of yet settled the argument. For obvious reasons, political theorists typically lack empirical evidence for most of their assertions as to whether democracy per se, or different variants of democracy, are more or less pro-environmental. In parallel, empirically oriented scholarship has been impaired with poor data, often obstructing them from properly evaluating democracy’s actual environmental pros and cons. In this paper we make use of recently collected unique data, enabling us to better address both these literatures. Using the data gathered by the Varieties of Democracy project on different conceptions of democracy, we empirically test whether different features of democracy, such as liberal in its thinner understanding, social- liberal, and deliberative, are beneficial for countries’ commitment to environmental improvements. In particular, we investigate which of these distinct features make democracies more prone to deliver environmental policy outputs, i.e., adopt climate laws, develop stricter environmental policies and incorporate sustainability into economic policies.This research project was supported by the Center for Collective Action Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden