The Evolution of Global Environmental Commitments

1. The Evolution of Global Environmental Commitments Thomas Bernauer, Anna Kalbhenn, Vally Koubi, Gabi Ruoff International Political Economy Society Conference Philadelphia, 14. - 15.11.08

2. Research Question • To what extent is the evolution of global environmental commitments influenced by • Globalization • Contingency effects • Domestic factors?  Spatial and temporal dynamics of international cooperation

3. Theoretical Framework • Economic Integration: Trade Openness • The more open a country, the greater the loss from a reduction in trade • Environmental regulation (like a tax on exports) increases the costs of exportables  The probability of ratification decreases

4. Theoretical Framework • Political Integration: Membership in International Organizations • Countries that are “entangled” in a larger network of international cooperation are more likely to behave cooperatively in the realm of environmental politics too  The probability of ratification increases

5. Theoretical Framework • Contingency Effects • Countries are more likely to ratify if other countries, especially those in their “peer group”, have done so • Number of countries ratified • Number of countries in the same region • Number of countries in the same income bracket • Pivotal countries

6. Theoretical Framework • Domestic Factors: Democracy • Demand Side: • Democracies tend to have higher civil liberties • better informed citizens can push governments and impose higher audience costs, hence likelihood of ratification increases • Supply Side: • According to median voter argument, democratic governments (=better providers of public goods) are expected to ratify global environmental treaties more often than autocracies • According to political myopia argument, democratic leaders (=interested in re-election) should be reluctant to ratify  ambiguous effect on ratification

7. Theoretical Framework • Domestic Factors: Income • Non-linear effect (inverted U-shaped) between income and likelihood of ratification • Controls: • Power • Environmental stringency • Age of treaty • Geographic region

8. Research Design • New dataset global environmental treaty ratifications • Time period 1950 - 2000 • Unit of analysis: country-treaty-year • Country-treaty pair in dataset from treaty existence until ratification by respective country • Binary-time-series-cross-sectional approach with cubic time polynomial to approximate hazard (Carter and Signorino 2008)

9. Results BTSCS logit regressions, robust standard errors in parentheses,clustered by country; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

10. Simulated Probabilities Baseline Model

11. Approximation baseline hazard

12. Conclusions • Trade has indeed a negative effect • Democracy: only weak, though positive effect • results driven by civil liberties • IGO membership and contingency variables increase likelihood of treaty ratification  contingency effects stronger than country-specific effects