Contradictory governance norms within world society: energy development strategies, environmental protection, and carbon dioxide emissions

ABSTRACT

World society theory argues that international organizations generate norms, or scripts, that push nations states to adopt similar governance strategies. This article focuses on an understudied set of governance scripts: development strategies that stem from international organizations and shape foreign aid. I argue that global norms of energy development push increased fossil fuel consumption as a means of development. It is widely known, however, that international environmental organizations diffuse norms that push nations to protect the environment. These contradictory scripts call into question the uniformly beneficial impact of the world polity on the natural environment. This study examines energy aid's impact on national carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in developing nations in the context of these contradictory norms. Using an original panel dataset of 121 countries, I test three hypotheses using fixed-effects regression with AR[1] corrections: (1) Whether aid increases CO₂ emissions in recipient countries, (2) whether nations more embedded in the world environmental regime emit less carbon dioxide, and (3) whether the impact of energy sector aid is moderated by world environmental regime integration. Findings show that aid is associated with increased CO₂ emissions, but environmental regime embeddedness moderates this effect. Conclusions include theoretical/methodological implications and directions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign aid
• development
• energy
• carbon dioxide
• globalization
• world society

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Odedokun (2003) for in-depth analysis of delays in aid disbursement.