Elections and environmental quality

Nicolae Stef and Sami Ben Jabeur ()
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Sami Ben Jabeur: UR CONFLUENCE : Sciences et Humanités (EA 1598) - UCLy - UCLy (Lyon Catholic University), ESDES - ESDES, Lyon Business School - UCLy - UCLy - UCLy (Lyon Catholic University)

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Abstract: This paper investigates how political elections influence environmental quality. From this perspective, we rely on the reward-punishment hypothesis (RPH) developed by democratic accountability theories. RPH implies that legislators can be held accountable by voters for increased pollution and/or environmental disasters. Consequently, incumbent politicians tend to limit environmental degradation during election campaigns because voters may switch their political preference as punishment for such degradations. Using a panel data set of 67 developed democracies over the period 2002–2015, our estimates reveal that the environmental quality tends to improve during the periods of legislative elections mainly in non-OECD countries. Such results provide evidence of the capacity of voters to influence incumbent politicians to embrace pro-environmental behavior as legislative elections approach.

Keywords: CO2 emissions; elections; politicians; voters; democracy; Émissions de CO2; élections; politiciens; électeurs; démocratie (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11
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Published in Environmental and Resource Economics, 2023, 84 (2), pp.593-625. ⟨10.1007/s10640-022-00739-1⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05148942

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-022-00739-1

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