Democracy and autocracy research

Environmental protection in democracies and autocracies - Democratic qualities and environmental protection

Scientists and policy makers emphasise the security implications of global warming. Since the 1970s, nation states have introduced measures to protect the environment, and currently most states consider environmental protection to be a state responsibility. In the early 1990s, global environmental change was also recognised as a political problem at international level. However, the performance of environmental policies varies considerably between countries and over time. Therefore, this research project investigates whether analysing the effects of different democratic qualities improves our understanding of transboundary differences in environmental performance between democracies and autocracies. There are significant differences in environmental performance between democracies, and environmental outcomes also vary considerably between autocracies. There is little knowledge about how the regime type of democracy affects environmental performance, although several characteristics of democracy are emphasised in the literature. Democracies differ in non-electoral aspects of their environmental performance. Autocracies differ in the extent to which they hold competitive elections and implement non-electoral features of democracy. This research project therefore investigates whether analysing the effects of each democratic feature contributes to a better understanding of the cross-border variance in environmental performance between democracies and autocracies. Political corruption affects a country's ability to adopt and implement environmental policies. Therefore, we also consider the joint influence of different democratic qualities and political corruption. The main findings of this research project were published in the following Palgrave Pivot in 2020:

Democratic qualities in comparative climate policy research

Previous empirical research on the relationship between democracy and global warming has mainly investigated whether there is a positive correlation between the regime type democracy and an improvement in climate protection. However, there is no consensus in the theoretical literature on which institutional features of democracy are crucial for successful climate policy. Therefore, results based on indices that summarise several dimensions of democratic quality could be misleading. Their effects could cancel each other out or hide the relative importance of each institutional feature. This research project investigates whether analysing the effects of the quality of democracy, measured by separate indicators, contributes to a better understanding of cross-border variance in climate policy. This is in comparison to focussing on the difference in regime type as measured by democracy quality measures. Compared to previous research, the results show that the positive effect of democracy on commitment to climate cooperation depends on the realisation of political rights. We find little evidence that the quality of democracy matters for climate policy outcomes. The main implication of our findings is that it makes sense to use more deaggregated measures of democracy to analyse substantive research questions.

The main findings of this research project "Why Choice Matters: Revisiting and Comparing Measures of Democracy" were published in 2018 in the special issue of the journal "Politcs and Governance", edited by Heiko Giebler (WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany), Saskia P. Ruth (German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Germany) and Dag Tanneberg (University of Potsdam, Germany)