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 ifthe way in which politicians are elected influences the environment as well. Thescope 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 suggestingthat politicians in majoritarian systems are less interested in environmental commitments than those in proportional representations. The consequence is thatenvironmental commitments are lower in the former system than in the latter
