IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/glenvp/v18y2018i3p106-129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceptions of Corruption, Political Distrust, and the Weakening of Climate Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan Rafaty

Abstract

This article presents a theory of the relationship between public perceptions of political corruption and the strength of national climate change mitigation policies, which is then formally tested in a time-series-cross-section analysis of twenty industrialized democracies from 1990 to 2012. The analysis reveals that greater perceptions of corruption are highly and robustly associated with weaker climate policies—especially nonmarket policies—when controlling for relevant political and economic variables. A government perceived by citizens to be “mildly corrupt” but that transitions to “very clean” would be associated with strengthening nonmarket climate policies from levels in Greece to levels in Sweden or from levels in Poland to those in Denmark. Lax market-based climate policies are also significantly linked to greater perceived corruption, but notably, they are robustly associated with the size of domestic energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries, which have received substantial environmental tax exemptions and free allocations even in the greenest, high-trust, low-corruption democracies.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan Rafaty, 2018. "Perceptions of Corruption, Political Distrust, and the Weakening of Climate Policy," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 18(3), pages 106-129, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:18:y:2018:i:3:p:106-129
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/glep_a_00471
    Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Modupeola Atoke ADEOLU-AKANDE, 2022. "Citizens’ Perception of Political Trust in The Nigerian Government on COVID-19 Management," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(8), pages 776-784, August.
    2. Best, Rohan & Zhang, Qiu Yue, 2020. "What explains carbon-pricing variation between countries?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    3. Halvard Buhaug & Jonas Vestby, 2019. "On Growth Projections in the Shared SocioeconomicPathways," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 19(4), pages 118-132, November.
    4. Mattauch, Linus & Hepburn, Cameron & Spuler, Fiona & Stern, Nicholas, 2022. "The economics of climate change with endogenous preferences," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Borozan, Dj, 2022. "Asymmetric effects of policy uncertainty on renewable energy consumption in G7 countries," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 412-420.
    6. Mattauch, Linus & Hepburn, Cameron & Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Pigou pushes preferences: decarbonisation and endogenous values," INET Oxford Working Papers 2018-16, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    7. Douenne, Thomas & Fabre, Adrien, 2020. "French attitudes on climate change, carbon taxation and other climate policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    8. Ioannis Dokas & Georgios Oikonomou & Minas Panagiotidis & Eleftherios Spyromitros, 2023. "Macroeconomic and Uncertainty Shocks’ Effects on Energy Prices: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-35, February.
    9. Jo, Ara & Carattini, Stefano, 2021. "Trust and CO2 emissions: Cooperation on a global scale," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 922-937.
    10. Filippo Maria D’Arcangelo & Ilai Levin & Alessia Pagani & Mauro Pisu & Åsa Johansson, 2022. "A framework to decarbonise the economy," OECD Economic Policy Papers 31, OECD Publishing.
    11. Sommer, Stephan & Mattauch, Linus & Pahle, Michael, 2022. "Supporting carbon taxes: The role of fairness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    12. Weiner, Csaba & Muth, Dániel & Lakócai, Csaba, 2023. "A szén-dioxid-kibocsátást terhelő adó társadalmi elfogadottsága és a fizetési hajlandóság alakulása Magyarországon [Public acceptance of and willingness to pay for a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1077-1107.
    13. Sebastian Levi & Christian Flachsland & Michael Jakob, 2020. "Political Economy Determinants of Carbon Pricing," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(2), pages 128-156, May.
    14. Sommer, Stephan & Konc, Théo & Drews, Stefan, 2023. "How Resilient is Public Support for Carbon Pricing? Longitudinal Evidence from Germany," Ruhr Economic Papers 1017, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    15. Daniele Malerba, 2022. "The Effects of Social Protection and Social Cohesion on the Acceptability of Climate Change Mitigation Policies: What Do We (Not) Know in the Context of Low- and Middle-Income Countries?," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(3), pages 1358-1382, June.
    16. Delia-Elena Diaconașu & Ionel Bostan & Cristina Căutișanu & Irina Chiriac, 2022. "Insights into the Sustainable Development of the Bioeconomy at the European Level, in the Context of the Desired Clean Environment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-14, September.
    17. Hammerle, Mara & Best, Rohan & Crosby, Paul, 2021. "Public acceptance of carbon taxes in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    18. Robert C. Schmidt, 2021. "Are there similarities between the Corona and the climate crisis?," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 11(2), pages 159-163, June.
    19. Lauri Peterson, 2022. "Domestic and international climate policies: complementarity or disparity?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 97-118, March.
    20. Khanh Hoang, 2022. "Silent but deadly: Political corruption and voluntary ESG disclosure in the United States," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(7), pages 2775-2793, October.
    21. Srivastav, Sugandha & Rafaty, Ryan, 2021. "Five Worlds of Political Strategy in the Climate Movement," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    22. Leonard Knollenborg & Stephan Sommer, 2023. "Diverging Beliefs on Climate Change and Climate Policy: The Role of Political Orientation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(4), pages 1031-1049, April.
    23. Stephan Sommer & Théo Konc & Stefan Drews, 2023. "How resilient is public support for carbon pricing? Longitudinal evidence from Germany," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0021, Berlin School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:18:y:2018:i:3:p:106-129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.