Paradise Islands? Island States and the Provision of Environmental Goods

Abstract

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.