Browsing by Author "Povitkina, Marina"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Are Carbon Dioxide Emissions Decoupled from GDP Growth in Well-functioning Democracies?
(2017) Lægreid, Ole Martin; Povitkina, Marina; V-Dem Institute
Empirical studies of the relationship between GDP per capita and country-level CO2 emissions tend to focus on the direct effect of per capita GDP growth, rarely taking political institutions into consideration. This paper introduces theoretical insights from environmental political science research, which suggests that CO2 emissions models would gain explanatory leverage if moderators gauging political institutions were considered. We test these theories by estimating the potentially moderating effects of democracy, corruption, veto points and players, and civil society activity. Our results suggest a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, which is barely affected by any variations in political and institutional factors. The only significant moderator in our analysis is bicameralism in democratic, low corrupt countries, which generates a stronger effect of per capita GDP growth at low levels of GDP per capita. Our analysis thus lends rigor to studies in environmental economics that find a positive and linear per capita GDP-CO2 relationship, and does not provide support for theories common in environmental political science research.
Democracy, Bureaucratic Capacity and Environmental Quality
(2015) Povitkina, Marina; QoG Institute
This paper explores the link between democracy, bureaucratic capacity and environmental quality. While many previous empirical studies traditionally have focused on either the democracy or bureaucratic capacity side of the story, they failed to acknowledge that both these factors in their interplay determine the delivery of public policy outcomes. This paper suggests that to account for the functioning of both the input and output side of the political system, democracy and bureaucratic capacity have to be considered in interaction. By employing the between estimator, the study empirically tests this claim on one of the major environmental problems— air pollution. The results show that the effect of democracy on carbon dioxide emissions is indeed contingent on the levels of bureaucratic capacity: Democracies emit less only if their bureaucratic capacity is high. If bureaucratic capacity is low, democracies do not do any better than authoritarian regimes.
Democracy, Quality of Government, and Public Goods Provision: The Case of Water Management
(2018) Povitkina, Marina; Bolkvadze, Ketevan; V-Dem Institute
A large strand of research has argued that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods to the general population. However, there is a large variation in how the existing democratic regimes perform, implying that democratic institutions are not sufficient to secure people’s wellbeing. The aim of this paper is to explore the sources of this variation. With the point of departure in theories on democracy, quality of government, and public goods provision, we posit that the way democracies perform in the delivery of public goods to their citizens depends on the presence of good quality institutions that shape the implementation of public policies. Using a mixed method design, this paper both empirically tests this proposition and offers an in-depth investigation into the mechanisms behind the interdependent relationship. In the first stage of our analysis, we explicitly test the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government on public goods provision using water quality as an example of such public good. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where quality of government is high. In contexts with low governmental quality, more democracy even seems to be associated with higher water pollution. In the second stage of our analysis, we proceed with examining the mechanisms of how poor quality of government disrupts the positive effects of democracy on people’s access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova.
Environmental commitments in different types of democracies: The role of liberal, social-liberal, and deliberative politics
(2021-03) Povitkina, Marina; Jagers, Sverker C.; V-Dem Institute
Ever since the recognition of ongoing, human-induced, large-scale environmental degradation, from the early 1960s onwards, the scholarly community has looked at democracy with mixed feelings. Some assert, quite openly, that democracy is devastating for the environmental performance of countries, some claim the opposite, while yet other scholars suggest that democratic models other than liberal democracy may offer a route forwards, towards a sustainable society. Both political theorists and empirical social scientists add fuel to this debate, and neither side has of yet settled the argument. For obvious reasons, political theorists typically lack empirical evidence for most of their assertions as to whether democracy per se, or different variants of democracy, are more or less pro-environmental. In parallel, empirically oriented scholarship has been impaired with poor data, often obstructing them from properly evaluating democracy’s actual environmental pros and cons. In this paper we make use of recently collected unique data, enabling us to better address both these literatures. Using the data gathered by the Varieties of Democracy project on different conceptions of democracy, we empirically test whether different features of democracy, such as liberal in its thinner understanding, social- liberal, and deliberative, are beneficial for countries’ commitment to environmental improvements. In particular, we investigate which of these distinct features make democracies more prone to deliver environmental policy outputs, i.e., adopt climate laws, develop stricter environmental policies and incorporate sustainability into economic policies.
Environmental NGOs in Emerging Democracies: Obstacles to Effective Action
(2024-04) Bolkvadze, Ketevan; Carlitz, Ruth; Povitkina, Marina; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) play an important role in environmental governance. However, ENGO activity does not always lead to favorable outcomes. This paper highlights the ways in which neoliberal economic reforms and governance deficits constrain ENGO effectiveness through a case study of Georgia — an emerging democracy that has attracted considerable external funding in the environmental domain. We analyze representative household survey data on environmental attitudes and conduct interviews with ENGO representatives and other key informants to show how many Georgian ENGOs are able to create a fa¸cade of successful activities for the country’s donors, while not contributing to meaningful environmental outcomes at the local level. The case study further illustrates the implications of Georgia’s business-government nexus, which censors criticism by genuine ENGOs, while leading others to take lucrative contracts for environmental impact evaluations. These findings have important implications for efforts by external actors working to promote environmental governance.
Environmental protection in authoritarian regimes: Investigating the role of pluralism.
(2020-06) Carlitz, Ruth; Povitkina, Marina; The QoG institute
When and how do authoritarian states secure environmental protection? Answering thisquestion is critical given that over half of the world’s population currently live in suchregimes. Furthermore, the majority of non-democracies are concentrated in the GlobalSouth, which is also home to some of world’s greatest environmental challenges. Muchof what we know is informed by the case of China and understands environmental pro-tection as a strategy for constructing and maintaining regime legitimacy. Much less isknown about why the degree of environmental protection varies within authoritarian set-tings. This is a critical oversight since environmental issues are by their nature local.As such, understanding when and how governments engage in environmental protectionrequires studying the incentives facing local officials. We help fill this knowledge gap withan empirical study of subnational variation in environmental protection in the author-itarian regime of Vietnam. Studying a single country allows us to isolate key featuresof political institutions while holding a number of other factors constant, strengtheningour ability to draw credible inferences. Specifically, we study the role of pluralism at thelocal (district) level, and consider how the degree of pluralism relates to two key environ-mental outcomes: air and water quality. While pluralism has the potential to promoteenvironmental protection by enhancing scrutiny of government actors, pluralism can alsoundermine commitments to pro-environment policies, given their contentious nature. Weanalyze data from Vietnam’s 208 districts and find that greater pluralism, measured bythe extent of civil society activity, electoral competition, and the degree of (corrupt) busi-ness influence is associated with worse environmental outcomes. These finding call intoquestion received wisdom about the benefits of participation for sustainable developmentand highlight the importance of developing contextually appropriate strategies.
“Gimme Shelter”: The Role of Democracy and Institutional Quality in Disaster Preparedness
(2016) Ahlbom, Tove; Povitkina, Marina; V-Dem Institute
Natural disasters cause suffering for millions of people around the globe every year and as climate change unfolds the likelihood of natural catastrophes is increasing. While weather shocks, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods are beyond our control, a governments’ capacity to protect populations largely determines the degree of human suffering in disasters. Democracies, with freedom of speech, broad public participation and representation, are believed to protect their populations better than non-democratic regimes. However, democratic institutions are insufficient for securing protection from disasters in contexts of corruption, poor planning and public administration incompetence. We argue that the effect of democracy on the extent of human suffering in disasters is contingent on the ability of governments to implement their tasks or the quality of implementing institutions. We test this interaction hypothesis using time series cross-sectional data from the Varieties of Democracy project, the Quality of Government dataset and data from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The results show that more democracy is associated with fewer people being affected by natural disasters only in settings where institutional quality is high. When institutional quality is low, more people seem to suffer in democracies than in authoritarian states.
How corruption shapes the relationship between democracy and electrification
(2016-11) Boräng, Frida; Jagers, Sverker; Povitkina, Marina; QoG Institute
One of the central questions in research on the drivers behind public good provision is how political regimes and institutions impact the provision of public goods. Previous research within this field has shown that democratic history is positively related to public good provision, including the universal provision of reliable electricity. In this paper, we elaborate on these findings by investigating how corruption interacts with democratic history in shaping electricity provision. It is argued that since corruption can shape the implementation process of public policies as well as the policy choices, high levels of corruption are likely to limit the positive effect of democratic experience. Following Min (2015), we measure electricity provision by the share of population living in unlit areas. We find that democratic history leads to higher electrification rates only when corruption is relatively low. In high-corrupt contexts, however, the positive effect of democratic history is absent.
Institutional Quality Causes Social Trust: Evidence from Survey and Experimental Data on Trusting Under the Shadow of Doubt
(2020-12) Martinangeli, Andrea F.M.; Povitkina, Marina; Jagers, Sverker C.; Rothstein, Bo; The QoG institute
Social trust is a crucial ingredient for successful collective action. What causes social trust to develop, however, remains poorly understood. The quality of political institutions has been proposed as a candidate driver and has been shown to correlate with social trust. We show that this relationship is causal. We begin by documenting a positive correlation between quality of institutions, measured by embezzlement, and social trust using survey data. We then take the investigation to the laboratory: We rst exogenously expose subjects to di erent levels of institutional quality in an environment mimicking public administration embezzlement. We then measure social trust among the participants using a trust game. Coherent with our survey evidence, individuals exposed to low institutional quality trust signi cantly less
Necessary but not Sustainable? The Limits of Democracy in Achieving Environmental Sustainability
(2018-05-02) Povitkina, Marina
The world today faces a number of environmental problems that are both severe and urgent. Finding effective solutions is one of the top priorities for the international community, with at least half of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals relating either directly or indirectly to reaching environmental sustainability. The question is: How to reach these goals? Environmental problems pose a complex dilemma for decision-makers. They have low visibility, a slow response time to policy interventions and often require multi-pronged policy solutions that are sufficiently funded, supported and rigorously enforced. Yet, they are rarely the first priority for voters. Solutions to environmental problems therefore rely on long-term vision and commitments, appropriate expertise, as well as institutions that can secure compliance from all the relevant actors. This dissertation looks at the political institutions that, it is argued, make countries more likely to commit to and reach environmental sustainability goals. It revisits previous findings indicating that democratic institutions are more conducive to securing strong environmental performance. Democracy, which shapes the rules of preference aggregation and thus influences environmental decision-making and policy adoption, does not necessarily guarantee that these policies will be successfully implemented. This dissertation argues that the performance of democracies in achieving environmental sustainability depends on the quality of government, which, broadly, encompasses the absence of corruption, high rule of law and high bureaucratic capacity. Quality of government shapes the implementation of public policies, but it may also affect the incentives of decision-makers in environmental policy-making. This dissertation hypothesizes that democracy and quality of government interact in the production of environmental sustainability outcomes. The five articles included in the dissertation test this overarching hypothesis on four key Sustainable Development Goals related to environmental sustainability: the reduction of CO2 emissions to avert climate change, preparedness for natural disasters that may arise as a result of climate change, the provision of energy, and the provision of clean water. The results are consistent across the studies and show that more democracy is only beneficial for environmental sustainability outcomes when high quality of government is in place. However, when quality of government is low, democracies tend to underperform, doing no better or doing even worse than authoritarian regimes. Corruption, weak public administration, and lack of rule of law undermine incentives for and the credibility of policy efforts, and obstruct the implementation of public policies related to environmental sustainability, thus limiting democratic governments’ ability to act in the long-term interests of the public.
Paradise Islands? Island States and the Provision of Environmental Goods
(2013-11) Jagers, Sverker C.; Povitkina, Marina; Sjöstedt, Martin; Sundström, Aksel; QoG Institute
Island states have been shown to trump continental states on collective action-related outcomes, such as democracy and institutional quality. The argument tested in this article contends that the same logic might apply to environmental goods. However, our empirical analysis shows counter-intuitive results. Firstly, among the 107 cross-national environmental indicators we analyze, being an island only has a positive impact on 20 measurements. Secondly, the causal factors suggested to make islands outperform continen-tal states in other aspects have weak explanatory power when analyzing the variance of the states' envi-ronmental performances. We conclude by discussing how these findings can be further explored.
Political Headwind: How wind power development influences political trust
(2023-12) Ulla, Erik; Povitkina, Marina; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
Most policy projects aimed at environmental protection are conflictual in their nature and have supporters and opponents. If a policy is implemented without taking into consideration the opinions of policy opponents, there is a risk of disappointment with political actors, lowered political trust and even dissatisfaction with democracy among them. In our paper, we explore how environmental policy projects, namely, installment of wind turbines, disrupt political trust among policy opponents. We conducted semi-structured interviews with policy opponents who live in proximity of completed and planned wind turbines on Haramsøya and Bjerkreim in Norway. We found that the reason why opponents might lose political trust is, first and foremost, lack of procedural fairness, as they become unhappy with the secretive, abusive, and unfair process; disappointment with institutional performance in policy implementation process; people's attempts at participation in development processes failing or being ignored by authorities and decision makers; and increased polarization in the society through increased hostility and distrust towards opposing groups. All factors play a role in a decreased political trust among opponents of wind turbines at the planning stage and after the completion of the project, although polarization is less pronounced before the project is implemented. Our results shed light on the potential sources of political discontent among citizens living in proximity to wind turbines and need to be taken into account by policymakers in the planning stage of wind power development.
The Impact of Corruption on Climate Change Mitigation
(2024-05) Sundström, Aksel; Harring, Niklas; Jagers, Sverker C.; Povitkina, Marina; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
This is a review of the rapidly growing literature on how corruption affects climate change mitigation, focusing both on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks. Analyzing 200 studies, we document that corruption hampers mitigation, i.e. increases emissions, and worsens sinks’ storage capacity through deforestation or overfishing. Reducing corruption is vital to successfully combatting global warming, because corruption makes climate policies less ambitious when formulated and less effective when implemented, due to low rule compliance. The findings are established through various types of data, research designs and methods. Trends are mapped and points of disagreement are highlighted. We suggest that research move beyond using country-level indicators and propose several avenues for future research.
Vulnerability of Small Island Development States. Does good governance help?
(2015) Sjöstedt, Martin; Povitkina, Marina; QoG Institute
Small island states have in recent decades been identified as particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. Violent winds, floods, and draughts have had severe consequences for millions of people and currently present an increasingly significant challenge for development and poverty alleviation in small islands. However, although islands tend to have similar geographical features, natural hazards produce widely different outcomes in different island states, indicating great variation in resilience. While some islands seem to cope and adapt fairly well, others suffer tremendously. That is the impact of natural hazards of the same physical magnitude ranges from going more or less unnoticed or causing only small disturbances to resulting in severe catastrophes. The overall objective of this paper is to explore the suggested sources of this variation further. More specifically, with the point of departure in theories about how institutions and social contracts affect collective action and adaptive capacities, this paper sets out to investigate how political institutions such as democracy, corruption, and government effectiveness impact the overall resilience of island states. While claims over the importance of institutions are well abound in the literature, there is a serious lack of systematic empirical accounts testing the validity of such claims. This shortcoming is addressed by this study’s quantitative, time series cross-sectional analysis using data from the International Disaster Risk database and the Quality of Government dataset.