Political-support lobbies responses to international environmental agreements

Abstract

Studies of the stability of international environmental agreements (IEAs) assumed a benevolent government who maximizes social welfare. The aim of our paper is to develop a theoretical framework in which the Governement's decisions are influenced by green and producer lobbies. To this end, we extend the political support approach of Hillman (1982) and model the IEA formation as a two stage non-cooperative game. our work studies the coalition formation process and determines both coalition abatement level and the size of stable coalition. The basis conclusion that emerges from the analysis of politically motivated coalition formation is that government's decision depends not only on ecological vulnerability and abatement cost in each but also on the political strength of green lobby over industrial lobby and its capacities to give political support to the government.Non-cooperative game, interest group, coalition theory, environmental policy.