arbiter
JournalsAccount

Can Democracy Protect Lower-Income Countries From Becoming Pollution Havens?

Thomas Bernauer et al.

Journal of Environment and Development2025https://doi.org/10.1177/10704965251317436article
ABDC B
Weight
0.44

Abstract

Lower-income countries absorb a substantial part of other countries’ consumption-related environmental footprints, with international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) serving as the conduit for this environmental “insourcing.” We examine whether democratic institutions could help mitigate the risk of lower-income countries becoming pollution havens in this context. Using data on CO 2 emissions for all non-OECD countries in 1990–2019, we find that democratic institutions can indeed mitigate the otherwise pollution-increasing effect of trade and FDI. Substantively, this mitigation effect is in the order of 0.14 metric tons of CO 2 per capita and, thus, quite substantial. We also observe similar effects for more broadly defined environmental footprint measures. Overall, the evidence we present is consistent with the expectation that democracy helps in protecting lower-income countries against disproportionately accumulating polluting economic activity in an open global economy.

3 citations

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10704965251317436

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{thomas2025,
  title        = {{Can Democracy Protect Lower-Income Countries From Becoming Pollution Havens?}},
  author       = {Thomas Bernauer et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Environment and Development},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10704965251317436},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Can Democracy Protect Lower-Income Countries From Becoming Pollution Havens?

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.44

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.32 × 0.4 = 0.13
M · momentum0.57 × 0.15 = 0.09
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.