[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v35y1998i3p341-361.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democracy and the Environment: An Empirical Assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Manus I. Midlarsky

    (Department of Political Science, Rutgers University)

Abstract
This article examines empirically the relationship between democracy and the environment. Theorists and policy-makers have been eager to put forward the virtues of democracy as a benign political influence on the environment, especially in contrast to the obvious environmental degradation under Communism that became obvious after its fall. Six measures of environmental protection or degradation are examined as the dependent variables, with the independent variables emerging from earlier tests of the impact of the environment on democracy. In the multiple regression analyses of three of the environmental indicators, deforestation, carbon dioxide emission, and soil erosion by water, the statistically significant effect of democracy on the environment actually was negative, contrary to prediction. In the fourth case, protected land area, the impact of democracy was positive while in the remaining two instances, freshwater availability and soil erosion by chemicals, there was no significant effect of democracy on the environment. Other variables such as economic development, agricultural density, European location, age of the polity, and precipitation behaved empirically as one would intuitively expect. These findings suggest that democracy cannot be viewed unidimensionally in its relationship to the environment, and that assumptions by theorists and policy-makers concerning the positive effect of democracy on the environment need to be re-examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Manus I. Midlarsky, 1998. "Democracy and the Environment: An Empirical Assessment," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 35(3), pages 341-361, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:35:y:1998:i:3:p:341-361
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/35/3/341.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bernauer, Thomas & Koubi, Vally, 2009. "Effects of political institutions on air quality," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1355-1365, March.
    2. Lisa Gianmoena & Vicente Rios, 2018. "The Determinants of CO2 Emissions Differentials with Cross-Country Interaction Effects: A Dynamic Spatial Panel Data Bayesian Model Averaging Approach," Discussion Papers 2018/234, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    3. Dasgupta, Shouro & De Cian, Enrica, 2016. "Institutions and the Environment: Existing Evidence and Future Directions," MITP: Mitigation, Innovation and Transformation Pathways 240747, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    4. Zhenbo Zhang & Xiaohua Meng, 2019. "Internet Penetration and the Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Cross-National Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-12, March.
    5. Stepping, Katharina M. K. & Banholzer, Lilli, 2017. "Autocratic angels? Democratic demons? The impact of regime type, state capacity and economic development on reaching environmental targets," IDOS Discussion Papers 26/2017, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    6. Todd A. Eisenstadt & Daniel J. Fiorino & Daniela Stevens, 2019. "National environmental policies as shelter from the storm: specifying the relationship between extreme weather vulnerability and national environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 9(1), pages 96-107, March.
    7. Wehkamp, Johanna & Koch, Nicolas & Lübbers, Sebastian & Fuss, Sabine, 2018. "Governance and deforestation — a meta-analysis in economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 214-227.
    8. Rios, Vicente & Gianmoena, Lisa, 2018. "Convergence in CO2 emissions: A spatial economic analysis with cross-country interactions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 222-238.
    9. Andrew David Allan Smith, 2016. "The Use and Abuse of Environmental Knowledge: A Bloomington School Interpretation of the Canadian Fisheries Act of 1868," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 139-161, June.
    10. Charfeddine, Lanouar & Mrabet, Zouhair, 2017. "The impact of economic development and social-political factors on ecological footprint: A panel data analysis for 15 MENA countries," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 138-154.
    11. Mukherjee, Sacchidananda & Chakraborty, Debashis, 2010. "Is there any Relationship between Environment, Human Development, Political and Governance Regimes? Evidences from a Cross-Country Analysis," MPRA Paper 19968, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Hassan F. Gholipour & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2018. "Institutions and the effectiveness of expenditures on environmental protection: evidence from Middle Eastern countries," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 20-39, March.
    13. Kolcava, Dennis & Nguyen, Quynh & Bernauer, Thomas, 2019. "Does trade liberalization lead to environmental burden shifting in the global economy?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 98-112.
    14. Joungseok Park, 2016. "How Democracy Matters: Evidence of Electoral Incentives for Environmental Policy," Working Papers 16-20, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    15. Chun-Ping Chang & Aziz N. Berdiev, 2015. "Do natural disasters increase the likelihood that a government is replaced?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(17), pages 1788-1808, April.
    16. Indra de Soysa & Jennifer Bailey & Eric Neumayer, 2004. "Free to Squander? Democracy, Institutional Design, and Economic Sustainability, 1975–2000," Macroeconomics 0412004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Katarzyna Iwińska & Athanasios Kampas & Kerry Longhurst, 2019. "Interactions between Democracy and Environmental Quality: Toward a More Nuanced Understanding," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-17, March.
    18. Danny García Callejas, 2015. "Voting for the environment: the importance of Democracy and education in Latin America," Revista de Economía del Caribe 14782, Universidad del Norte.
    19. Chaikumbung, Mayula & Doucouliagos, Hristos & Scarborough, Helen, 2019. "Institutions, Culture, and Wetland Values," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 195-204.
    20. Lv, Zhike, 2017. "The effect of democracy on CO2 emissions in emerging countries: Does the level of income matter?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 900-906.
    21. Marco Battaglini & Bård Harstad, 2020. "The Political Economy of Weak Treaties," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(2), pages 544-590.
    22. Olli-Pekka Kuusela & Gregory S. Amacher, 2016. "Changing Political Regimes and Tropical Deforestation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 64(3), pages 445-463, July.
    23. Soohyeon Kim & Jungho Baek & Eunnyeong Heo, 2019. "A New Look at the Democracy–Environment Nexus: Evidence from Panel Data for High- and Low-Income Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-14, April.
    24. Kelly F. Austin & Mark D. Noble & Kellyn McCarthy, 2017. "Conditionality Contaminates Conservation: Structural Adjustment and Land Protection in Less-Developed Nations," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 5(5), pages 46-58, May.
    25. Murtazashvili, Ilia & Murtazashvili, Jennifer & Salahodjaev, Raufhon, 2019. "Trust and deforestation: A cross-country comparison," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 111-119.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:35:y:1998:i:3:p:341-361. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.