Elections and Environmental Quality

This paper investigates how political elections influence environmental quality. From this perspective, we rely on the reward-punishment hypothesis (RPH) developed by democratic accountability theories. RPH implies that legislators can be held accountable by voters for increased pollution and/or environmental disasters. Consequently, incumbent politicians tend to limit environmental degradation during election campaigns because voters may switch their political preference as punishment for such degradations. Using a panel data set of 67 developed democracies over the period 2002–2015, our estimates reveal that the environmental quality tends to improve during the periods of legislative elections mainly in non-OECD countries. Such results provide evidence of the capacity of voters to influence incumbent politicians to embrace pro-environmental behavior as legislative elections approach.