Abstract
Previous <em>empirical</em> research on democracy and global warming has mainly questioned whether democracy contributes to climate protection. However, there is no consensus in the <em>theoretical</em> literature on what institutional traits of democracy are crucial for climate policy. Thus, results based on indices that summarize multiple democracy quality dimensions could be misleading, as their effects could balance each other out or hide the relative importance of each institutional trait. This article examines whether the analysis of the effects of democracy quality dimensions, measured by separate indicators, contributes to a better understanding of cross-national variance in climate policy compared to the focus on the regime type difference, measured by democracy quality measures. Compared to earlier research, the results indicate that the positive effect of democracy on commitment to climate cooperation depends on the realization of political rights. We find little to support the claim that democracy quality dimensions matter for climate policy outcomes. The main implication of our findings is that it could be fruitful to use more disaggregated democracy measures for the analysis of substantive research questions.
Highlights
This article examines whether the analysis of the effects of specific dimensions of democracy quality, as opposed to the focus on the regime type difference, improves our understanding of cross-national variation in commitment to climate cooperation and climate change mitigation performance
The results suggest that previous research might have only found significant effects of democracy quality measures on commitment because they contain or are highly correlated with the dimension of political rights
In accordance with our theoretical expectations, we find that the positive effect of democracy quality depends on political rights
Summary
This article examines whether the analysis of the effects of specific dimensions of democracy quality, as opposed to the focus on the regime type difference, improves our understanding of cross-national variation in commitment to climate cooperation and climate change mitigation performance. In accordance with their research question, empirical studies test the effect of summary measures of democracy (e.g., from Freedom House and Polity IV) on climate policy. Civil rights enable individuals to focus on their self-interest even if it is against the common interest of environmental protection They might contribute, via the rule of law, to the acceptance of international agreements and the implementation of climate policies. To answer our research question, we test the effects of four democracy quality dimensions—electoral and horizontal accountability, political and civil rights—on climate policy commitment and performance using data from the V-Dem-Project (Coppedge et al, 2017; Pemstein et al, 2017). The final section summarizes the findings and presents our conclusions (5)
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