HOW DOES DEMOCRACY REDUCE ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION? An empirical assessment of the information mechanism

Abstract: Several studies have found that countries with higher levels of democracy have better outcomes in reducing environmental degradation, at least under some circumstances. However, there is little empirical research on the causal mechanisms explaining how democracy decreases degradation. This essay therefore empirically tests the information mechanism- the belief that democracy positively affects information about environmental degradation which in turn activates other causal mechanisms- and thereby contributes with more knowledge to the research gap of how democracy reduces environmental degradation. The essay investigates the information mechanism both from the established Bottom-up approach and from the often-overlooked Top-down perspective which I develop further in this essay. Statistical regression analyses are conducted with earlier observational data as well as a self-collected dataset on information about environmental degradation on government web domains collected through quantitative content analysis. Results show mixed and often weak results for a correlation between level of democracy and information about environmental degradation from both perspectives, suggesting that availability of information is perhaps not the most important explanatory factor of democracies’ greater success in reducing environmental degradation. However, the essay not excludes that the results could have been different with larger and better data sets, especially from the Bottom-Up approach.