The Political Origins of the 'Tragedy of the Commons' Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, 2000-2012

Abstract

The politics behind common-pool resource management are not well-understood. Using detailed satellite imagery data, I examine the effects of local political competition on deforestation across municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon, 2000-2012. I use the competitive of elections at higher levels of government to construct a shift-share instrument for causally estimating municipal politics competition. The results show that although the median voter in the Amazon has a strong preference for environmental conservation, local political competition causally increases deforestation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with bureaucrats and activists, I illustrate the ways in which activist fatigue and bureaucratic turnover explain this effect. Political turnover induces accompanying turnover in local bureaucratic structures, discouraging activists from mobilizing for conservation. To further test this mechanism, I code an original database of local protests and show that the findings cannot be explained by prominent alternative mechanisms related to partisanship, federal monitoring of local governments, nor local agricultural development. The analysis provides systematic and causal evidence of the political origins of the tragedy of the commons.''