Democracy, democratization and climate change: complex relationships

Burnell, Peter

doi:10.1080/13510347.2012.709684

Cited by 91 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…And should good governance be prioritized over democratization? In contrast to the arguments that Burnell alerts us to, 43 I maintain below that international actors are not actually facing such a cruel choice at all.…”

Section: Kneuermentioning

confidence: 65%

Who is greener? Climate action and political regimes: trade-offs for national and international actors

Kneuer

2012

Democratization

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Climate change constitutes a major concern for all political regimes. The question, however, is whether different regime types show different degrees of disposition to reduce carbon emissions. Studies comparing the performance between democracies and autocracies provide us with some fundamental findings but most do not take into consideration the variety of regimes that are neither full democracies nor full autocracies. The perspective of this inquiry is one of a scholar in democracy studies aiming mainly to better understand possible trade-offs of different regime types in the context of climate change. The analysis addresses, first, the national level and discusses possible trade-offs and the difficult choices faced by democracies, autocracies, young democracies and democratizing countries in dealing with climate change. Secondly, the implications for the international level are considered, especially for democracy promoters and their policy options concerning emerging democracies and countries in transition that perform poorly in respect to climate action.

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Section: Kneuermentioning

confidence: 65%

Who is greener? Climate action and political regimes: trade-offs for national and international actors

Kneuer

2012

Democratization

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“…This is notably true for the more markedly "liberal" and market-centered democracies of the United States, Canada, and Australia, including when we compare them to non-liberal democratic China (Burnell 2012;Held, Roger and Nag 2013). Even if the performance of countries classified as democracies were a bit better than average, their average performance is still poor.…”

Section: Focusing Evaluation and Accountability: The Case Of Climate mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…They can reduce the risks of conflict that could lead to chaos. Burnell (2012) suggests that while democracy may be weak in promoting climate change mitigation, it is helpful in adaptation. It may be important too for due consideration of the value choices involved in deciding responses to climate change, regarding who will bear costs, who bears which risks, and which values will be prioritized.…”

Section: Focusing Evaluation and Accountability: The Case Of Climate mentioning

confidence: 97%

Human Security Analysis as a Framework for Value-Oriented Governance: The Example of Climate Change

Gasper¹

2014

International Journal of Social Quality

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Good governance" may be viewed as governance that effectively promotes human rights, human security and human development. This article discusses human security analysis, which in certain ways offers an integration of these "human" perspectives together with a "social" orientation, by combining a person-focus with systematic investigation of the environing systems of all sorts: physical, cultural, organizational. The importance of such analysis is illustrated through the example of climate change impacts and adaptation. The article presents applications of a human security framework in governance, for policy analysis, planning and evaluation issues in climate change and other fields. The concluding section suggests that human security analysis may provide a way to apply insights from social quality analysis to detailed case investigation and policy analysis, while reducing macro-sociological abstraction and neglect of the natural environment.

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“…But does democratization play a role in combatting the most challenging international environmental issue to dateclimate change? In the climate politics literature, the relationship between democracy and emissions is largely based on the assumption of positive effect (Burnell, 2012(Burnell, , 2014. According to this approach, democracies should excel at mitigation because of the higher value they place on human life (Cole & Neumayer, 2005), increased opportunity they provide to environmental actors to influence policymaking (Schultz & Crockett, 1990) and accountability of elected politicians to their publics (Farzin & Bond, 2006;Kotov & Nikitina, 1995;Li & Reuveny, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet empirical research suggests that such optimism might be misfounded. Indeed, while democracies tend to make more promises to reduce emissions than autocracies, they are not usually better at keeping them (Battig & Bernauer, 2009;Bohmelt, Boker, & Ward, 2016;Burnell, 2012). The thesis is also undermined by the fact that some of the world's leading democracies have also been laggards in climate mitigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy, electoral systems and emissions: explaining when and why democratization promotes mitigation

Clulow

2018

Climate Policy

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Does democratization help countries mitigate climate change? On the one hand, by increasing the value placed on quality of life, creating more opportunity for environmental actors to influence policymaking and holding elected politicians accountable, an increase in democratic institution and process should promote emissions reduction. On the other hand, the desire to safeguard individual freedom presumably brings with it an aversion to intervene in lifestyle and market decisions, thereby raising the risk of climate inaction. This outcome is further encouraged by the political need to balance (conflicting) environmental and energy interests.This article evaluates the thesis that democratization promotes mitigation in light of national emissions levels from 1990 to 2012. Using data from the Freedom House, Polity IV and V-Dem indices, World Bank World Development Indicators and the World Resources Institute Climate Data Explorer it conducts a large-N investigation of the emissions levels of 147 countries. Although several quantitative studies have found that domestic political regimes affect emissions levels, this article goes beyond existing research by building a more sophisticatedmultilevel-research design to determine whether democracy: (a) continues to be an important driver of emissions when country-level clustering is accounted for and (b) has uniform effects across countries. The results indicate that, even after controlling for country-level clustering and holding constant the other confounding factors, democracy is indeed a significant driver. More strikingly, they reveal that while democracies tend to have lower emissions than non-democracies, democratization spells within the same country do not have the same kind of inhibitory effects as they do between countries. This article also finds tentative evidence that the type of electoral system plays a critical role in shaping the effect of democratization on individual countries. Key policy insights. Democracies tend to perform better in terms of emission levels than nondemocracies. . Democratization has non-uniform effects across different countries, with the type of electoral system playing a key role in determining the effect that democratization has on national emissions. . Further research is needed to develop our understanding of how the political context influences emissions, especially with regard to the influence of pro and anti-decarbonisation actors.ARTICLE HISTORY

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Democracy, democratization and climate change: complex relationships

Cited by 91 publications

References 29 publications

Who is greener? Climate action and political regimes: trade-offs for national and international actors

Who is greener? Climate action and political regimes: trade-offs for national and international actors

Human Security Analysis as a Framework for Value-Oriented Governance: The Example of Climate Change

Democracy, electoral systems and emissions: explaining when and why democratization promotes mitigation

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