DOI: 10.18848/1835-7156/cgp/a418 ISSN: 2833-4140

How Reliable Is the Democracy-Climate Nexus?

Muhammad Muinul Islam
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<p>The impact of democracy on climate change mitigation remains contested, as empirical findings are mixed. This inconsistency may stem from prior studies relying on single democracy measures and narrow model specifications, leaving the true democracy-climate relationship unclear. We address these limitations by conducting a comprehensive panel analysis with multiple democracy indices and advanced estimators. Specifically, we employ six distinct democracy indices and various time-series cross-sectional methods (including panel-corrected standard errors, fixed effects [FE], and a random effects within-between [REWB] model) to separately capture long-run (structural) democracy and short-run changes. Our findings show that higher long-run levels of democracy are consistently associated with lower carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions per capita. This negative association is especially pronounced in high-income countries and significantly weaker in low-income countries. Moreover, the results remain robust across different model specifications and sensitivity checks, including outlier exclusions and temporal lags. These findings suggest that enduring democratic institutions can facilitate climate mitigation, but only when supported by sufficient economic development and administrative capacity. Taken together, the results reconcile previously mixed evidence and advance theoretical understanding of the democracy-climate nexus.</p>

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