[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/apl/wpaper/16-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Democracy Matters: Evidence of Electoral Incentives for Environmental Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Joungseok Park
Abstract
I test the theoretical predictions from Park (2016) that the right-wing politicians will distort environmental policy to avoid losing the election. I study how the population environmental preferences, as measured by the LCV scores, influence state governors to become more concerned about the environment. From a U.S. panel data in the period of 1971-2007, I find the Republican state governors increase the environmental expenditure per capita by approximately 1.5 percent as the Democrat LCV scores increase by 1 percent; and they increase the environmental expenditure per capita by 4.8 percent as the Republican LCV scores decrease by 1 percent. That is, Republican governors respond positively to the environmental preferences of Democrats, but not to that of Republicans. Key Words: Democracy; Environmental Policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Joungseok Park, 2016. "How Democracy Matters: Evidence of Electoral Incentives for Environmental Policy," Working Papers 16-20, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
  • Handle: RePEc:apl:wpaper:16-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.appstate.edu/RePEc/pdf/wp1620.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    2. John Hassler & Per Krusell, 2012. "Economics And Climate Change: Integrated Assessment In A Multi-Region World," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 974-1000, October.
    3. Sigman, Hilary, 2003. "Letting States Do the Dirty Work: State Responsibility for Federal Environmental Regulation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(1), pages 107-122, March.
    4. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 1995. "Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 769-798.
    5. John A. List & Daniel M. Sturm, 2006. "How Elections Matter: Theory and Evidence from Environmental Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1249-1281.
    6. 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.
    7. Myerson, Roger B., 2013. "Fundamentals of Social Choice Theory," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(3), pages 305-337, June.
    8. Fredriksson, Per G. & Neumayer, Eric & Damania, Richard & Gates, Scott, 2005. "Environmentalism, democracy, and pollution control," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 343-365, March.
    9. Per Fredriksson & Jim Wollscheid, 2007. "Democratic institutions versus autocratic regimes: The case of environmental policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 381-393, March.
    10. Joungseok Park, 2016. "Rational Skeptics: On the Strategic Communication of Scientific Data," Working Papers 16-19, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    11. Congleton, Roger D, 1992. "Political Institutions and Pollution Control," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(3), pages 412-421, August.
    12. Fredriksson, Per G. & Neumayer, Eric, 2013. "Democracy and climate change policies: Is history important?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 11-19.
    13. Margrethe Winslow, 2005. "Is Democracy Good for the Environment?," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(5), pages 771-783.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. 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.
    2. Joungseok Park, 2016. "Rational Skeptics: On the Strategic Communication of Scientific Data," Working Papers 16-19, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    3. Kammerlander, Andreas & Schulze, Günther G., 2020. "Are Democracies Cleaner?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Sophie Bernard & Louis Hotte & Stanley L. Winer, 2010. "Democracy, Inequality and the Environment when Citizens can Mitigate Privately or Act Collectively," CESifo Working Paper Series 3241, CESifo.
    5. Beland, Louis-Philippe & Boucher, Vincent, 2015. "Polluting politics," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 176-181.
    6. Fredriksson, Per G. & Neumayer, Eric, 2013. "Democracy and climate change policies: Is history important?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 11-19.
    7. Dong-Hyeon Kim & Yi-Chen Wu & Shu-Chin Lin, 2022. "Carbon dioxide emissions, financial development and political institutions," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 837-874, May.
    8. 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.
    9. Bernard, Sophie & Hotte, Louis & Winer, Stanley L., 2014. "Democracy, inequality and the environment when citizens can mitigate health consequences of pollution privately or act collectively," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 142-156.
    10. Dalle Nogare, Chiara & Kauder, Björn, 2017. "Term limits for mayors and intergovernmental grants: Evidence from Italian cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-11.
    11. Daniel Fiorino, 2011. "Explaining national environmental performance: approaches, evidence, and implications," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(4), pages 367-389, November.
    12. Per G. Fredriksson & Khawaja A. Mamun, 2014. "Tobacco Politics and Electoral Accountability in the United States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(1), pages 4-34, January.
    13. Shouro Dasgupta & Enrica De Cian, 2016. "Institutions and the Environment: Existing Evidence and Future Directions," Working Papers 2016.41, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    14. James B. Ang & Per G. Fredriksson, 2017. "Statehood Experience, Legal Traditions, And Climate Change Policies," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1511-1537, July.
    15. Andreas Bernecker & Pierre C. Boyer & Christina Gathmann, 2021. "The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the US Welfare Reform," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 26-57, May.
    16. Nesta, Lionel & Vona, Francesco & Nicolli, Francesco, 2014. "Environmental policies, competition and innovation in renewable energy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 396-411.
    17. Chauvin, Juan Pablo & Tricaud, Clemence, 2022. "Gender and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Crisis Response," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12411, Inter-American Development Bank.
    18. Ohad Raveh & Yacov Tsur, 2018. "Resource Windfalls and Public Debt: The Role of Political Myopia," OxCarre Working Papers 205, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    19. Mariana Lopes da Fonseca, 2016. "Candid Lame Ducks," CESifo Working Paper Series 5773, CESifo.
    20. S. Borağan Aruoba & Allan Drazen & Razvan Vlaicu, 2019. "A Structural Model Of Electoral Accountability," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(2), pages 517-545, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    democracy; environmental policy.;

    JEL classification:

    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:apl:wpaper:16-20. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: O. Ashton Morgan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deappus.html .

    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.