Political-Support Lobbies Responses to IEAs

Abstract

Studies of the stability of international environmental agreements (IEAs) assumed a benevolent government who maximizes social welfare. The aim of our paper is to develop a theoretical framework in which the Government’s decisions are influenced by green and producer lobbies. To this end, we extend the political support approach of Hillman (1982) and model the IEA formation as a two stage non-cooperative game. Our work studies the coalition formation process and determines both coalition abatement level and the size of stable coalition. The basis conclusion that emerges from the analysis of politically motivated coalition formation decision depends not only on ecological vulnerability and abatement cost in each but also on the political strength of green lobby over industrial lobby and its capacities to give political support to the government.The self-enforcing IEA will be signed by a lot of countries when abatement costs are low and ecological vulnerability are high and signatory and non-signatory governments are more supported by industrial lobby than environmental lobby (Pusher) or both are supported by industrial lobby group (Bystanders). In contrast, with the same national political support when countries are characterised by high abatement costs and low ecological vulnerability (draggers) then a self-enforcing IEA may not be able to sustain more than 2 signatories government. Nevertheless, usually we found that Pusher countries will always take the more stringent environmental positions than the other countries.