Democratic inclusiveness, climate policy outputs, and climate policy outcomes

ABSTRACT

In an ideal inclusive political system, all citizens are equally able to influence and challenge policies. We focus on how inclusiveness affects climate policies and outcomes. We argue that more inclusive systems should produce more policies in response to environmental threats and should have better outcomes. We test these hypotheses using panel and cross-sectional data relating to climate policy outputs and outcomes. The results suggest that inclusiveness is positively associated with policy outputs, but probably not with lower emissions of greenhouse gases. This pattern may relate to a lack of deliberation in systems, which are relatively inclusive in the narrower sense of pluralist democratic theory.

KEYWORDS:

• climate policy
• democracy
• inclusiveness
• environmental sustainability

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this article has been presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Nicole Rae Baerg and Jana von Stein provided useful comments on an earlier draft. We also thank the journal's editor, Aurel Croissant, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tobias Böhmelt is Reader in the Department of Government. His research centers on environmental political economy and conflict studies.

Marit Böker is lecturer at SPIRE University of Keel. Her research interests are in normative political theory and sustainability.

Hugh Ward is Professor in the Department of Government University of Essex. His research interests are environmental political economy and conflict studies.

Notes

1. UNEP, Rio Declaration on Environment.

2. Dahl, Polyarchy; Dahl, Democracy and its Critics.

3. Dahl, Polyarchy, 4.

4. Ibid., 2.

5. Coppedge et al., “Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy,” 639.

6. Ward, “Liberal Democracy and Sustainability,” 387; Kneuer, “Who is Greener?,” 867.

7. Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival.

8. Bernauer et al., “Comparison of International and Domestic”; Cao and Ward, “Winning Coalition Size.”

9. Barry, Rethinking Green Politics, 215; Arias-Maldonado, “The Democratisation of Sustainability.”

10. Dobson, “Democratising Green Theory”; Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond; Eckersley, “Deliberative Democracy, Ecological Representation”; Smith, “Taking Deliberation Seriously”; Dryzek and Stevenson, “Global Democracy and Earth System Governance.”

11. Marshall et al., Polity IV Project.

12. Congleton, “Pollution Institutions”; Midlarsky, “Democracy and the Environment”; Neumayer, “Democratic Environmental Commitment”; Fredriksson et al. “Environmentalism, Democracy, and Pollution Control”; Li and Reuveny, “Democracy and Environmental Degradation”; Ward, “Liberal Democracy and Sustainability”; Lachapelle and Paterson, “Drivers of National Climate Policy.”

13. Neumayer, “Democratic Environmental Commitment”; Gates et al., Environmental Commitment, Democracy, and Inequality; Roberts et al., “Who Ratifies Environmental Treaties”; Bernauer et al., “Comparison of International and Domestic.”

14. Ward, “Liberal Democracy and Sustainability”; Fiorino, “Explaining National Environmental Performance,” 388; Cao and Ward, “Winning Coalition Size.”

15. Mathews, “Community and the Ecological Self”; Achterberg, “Sustainability, Community, and Democracy”; Coenen et al., Participation and Environmental Decision-Making.

16. Betsill, “International Environmental Politics”; Betsill and Corell, NGO Diplomacy; Bernauer et al., “Democracy-Civil Society Paradox”; Böhmelt, “Civil Society Lobbying”; Böhmelt and Betzold, “ENGOs Environmental Commitments”; Fredriksson and Gaston, “Ratification of the 1992 Climate Change Convention”; Fredriksson et al., “Kyoto Protocol Cooperation”; Roberts et al., “Who Ratifies Environmental Treaties”; Rootes, “Mobilising for the Environment.”

17. Held, Models of Democracy, 204.

18. Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 5–6.

19. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics.

20. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory; Barber, Strong Democracy.

21. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms; Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy.”

22. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory; Dahl, Who Governs?; Dahl, Polyarchy.

23. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

24. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, 3.

25. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory; Dahl, Who Governs?; Dahl, Polyarchy.

26. Blokland, Pluralism, Democracy and Political Knowledge, 199.

27. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory; Young, Inclusion and Democracy.

28. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, 42.

29. Parkinson, Deliberating in the Real World, 4.

30. Dryzek, Deliberative Governance, 23.

31. Zwart, “A Greener Alternative?,” 25; Lövbrand and Khan, “The Deliberative Turn in Green Political Theory.”

32. Hendriks, “Integrated Deliberation”; Parkinson, Deliberating in the Real World.

33. Mansbridge et al., “A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy,” 17–19.

34. Dietz et al., “The Struggle to Govern the Commons”; Pretty and Ward, “Social Capital and the Environment.”

35. Huber, “Pioneer Countries and the Global Diffusion.”

36. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond; Smith, Deliberative Democracy and the Environment.

37. Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity; Shearman and Smith, Climate Change Challenge.

38. Ward et al., “Open Citizens’ Juries”; Niemeyer, “Deliberation in the Wilderness.”

39. See Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory; Dahl, Who Governs?; Dahl, Polyarchy.

40. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics.

41. Meadowcroft, “Deliberative Democracy.”

42. Dryzek and Dunleavy, Theories of the Democratic State, 35–57.

43. Dahl (Polyarchy, 2), was a pluralist who was well aware of the importance to democracy of citizens being able to formulate (and reformulate) preferences under fair conditions.

44. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, 119–35. Because climate change and other significant environmental problems are global, capturing whether this is the case for them is particularly challenging.

45. Ayres and Braithwaite, Responsive Regulation.

46. Olson, Logic of Collective Action.

47. Jordan and Maloney, “How Bumble Bees Fly.”

48. Bernauer and Böhmelt, “National Climate Policies”; also Bättig et al., “Measuring Countries’ Cooperation,” 478; Bättig et al., “A Climate Change Index”; Bättig and Bernauer, “National Institutions and Public Goods,” 294.

49. Marshall et al., Polity IV Project, 67.

50. Ibid., 27.

51. Coppedge et al., “Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy.”

52. Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival.

53. Coppedge et al., “Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy,” 637–8.

54. Bernauer et al., “Democracy-Civil Society Paradox.”

55. Fredriksson and Ujhelyi, in Political Institutions, suggest that in some cases fewer groups might mean that the environmental lobby is better organized and, hence, better able to exert political pressure. However, we find that the “main effect” of our ENGO variable on environmental outputs is positive (see also Bernauer et al., “Democracy-Civil Society Paradox”).

56. Bernauer et al., “Democracy-Civil Society Paradox.”

57. Data are taken from the World Bank Development Indicators unless a source is mentioned in the text.

58. Pevehouse et al., “The Correlates of War 2.”

59. Ward, “International Linkages and Environmental Sustainability”; Bernauer et al., “Comparison of International and Domestic.”

60. Gleditsch, “Expanded Trade and GDP Data.”

61. Spilker, “Helpful Organizations,” 357f; Frankel and Rose, “Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment?”

62. Seleden and Song, “Environmental Quality and Development”; Grossman and Krueger, “Economic Growth and the Environment.”

63. Spilker, “Helpful Organizations.”

64. Seleden and Song, “Environmental Quality and Development”; Grossman and Krueger, “Economic Growth and the Environment.”

65. Bättig and Bernauer, “National Institutions and Public Goods,” 296.

66. Bättig et al., “A Climate Change Index.” Descriptive statistics for the cross-sectional and panel samples are given in Tables A1 and A2 in the Supplemental data. We also replaced our variable for mitigation costs by a simpler indicator – the level of CO₂ emissions per capita in 1990 (Bättig and Bernauer, “National Institutions and Public Goods,” 296).

67. Availability of inclusiveness-C limits reported results to the period up to 2000. In the Supplemental data Table A3 reports results to 2005, based on inclusiveness-P.

68. In models 3 and 4 these coefficients refer to the impact of inclusiveness when ENGO-leverage is (hypothetically) zero.

69. We also considered Henisz's (“Institutional Environment for Infrastructure Investment”) measure of veto players and the presence of green parties in a country's government as controls. Neither variable substantively affects our results when it is included.

70. In Models 7 and 8 these coefficients refer to the impact of inclusiveness when ENGO-leverage is (hypothetically) zero.

71. Bernauer et al., “Democracy-Civil Society Paradox.”

72. The compliance literature (see Downs and Jones, “Reputation, Compliance, and International Law”; Chayes and Chayes, “On Compliance”) suggest that while some states are willing to act, they lack the ability. Proxying state-capacity using GDP per capita (Hendrix, “Measuring State Capacity”) we found no evidence for an interaction with policy output in a model for CO₂ emissions per capita.

73. Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons”; Olson, Logic of Collective Action.

74. Dobson, “Democratising Green Theory”; Torgerson, The Promise of Green Politics; Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond; Eckersley, “Deliberative Democracy, Ecological Representation”; Arias-Maldonado, “The Democratisation of Sustainability”; Smith, “Taking Deliberation Seriously”; Smith, Deliberative Democracy and the Environment; Ward et al., “Open Citizens’ Juries”; Meadowcroft, “Deliberative Democracy”; Baber and Bartlett, Deliberative Environmental Politics; Humphrey, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory; Dryzek and Stevenson, “Global Democracy”; Stevenson and Dryzek, “Democratisation of Global Climate Governance”; Stevenson and Dryzek, Democratizing Global Climate Governance.

75. Niemeyer, “The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation”; Dryzek et al., “Promethean Elites Encounter Precautionary Publics”; Grönlund et al., “Deliberation and Civic Virtue”; Sanders, “The Effects of Deliberative Polling”; Aasen and Vatn, “Deliberation on GMOs.”

76. Goodin and Dryzek, “Deliberative Impacts”; Fung, “Recipes for Public Spheres”; Fung and Wright, “Deepening Democracy.”

77. Parkinson and Mansbridge, Deliberative Systems.

78. Mansbridge et al., “A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy.”

79. Meadowcroft, “Deliberative Democracy.”

80. Many scientists are pessimistic about whether Copenhagen amounts to the cuts required cuts to prevent the 2^o Celsius limit being broken (Rogelj et al., “Copenhagen Accord Pledges are Paltry”).

81. Betsill, “Environmental NGOs.”

82. Stevenson and Dryzek, Democratizing Global Climate Governance.