Environment and political economics: Left-wing liberalism or conservative leftism - Which is better for eco-efficiency? Evidence from Poland

Abstract

The American literature on political ecology suggests that there is a significant link between the rule of a given political party (Republicans or Democrats) on both national and local level and the environmental policy pursued. When the latter party is in power, environmental budget is larger and local governments are more likely to adopt environmentally sustainable policies. However, the political context of European countries is usually much more complex, as there exist different hybrids of economic views and core social values which so far have gathered a little attention with regard to its impact on eco-efficiency. There is a need to analyse which types of political beliefs are correlated with higher level of environmental performance. Hence, the main goal of this paper is to estimate the impact of long-term political preferences on the eco-efficiency levels of Polish country districts. Eco-efficiency was calculated as a ratio of economic development and environmental pressure in four dimensions: soil pollution, water pollution, air pollution, and bio-uniformity. Double bootstrapped truncated regression was used to capture the effects of the political views proxied by electoral decisions and individual willingness to adopt agri-environmental schemes. The analysis was complemented with spatial autoregressive modelling. The most important finding was that local authorities from large parties are more eco-efficient than local committees. Simultaneously, left-wing (but market liberal) views were correlated with higher eco-efficiency levels in relation to other political options. Higher share of councillors with university degrees and subsidies under common agricultural policy were further positive determinants of eco-efficiency.