Research

Abstract:

Biodiversity decline and ecosystem loss are among the gravest transnational crises facing the planet, with deep implications for climate change. What determines how different countries choose to protect nature? Previous work has argued that economic dependence on natural resources undermines green policies. I instead argue that resource dependence can lead to mobilization in favor of protection. Citizens experience the negative consequences of environmental degradation and ecosystem loss firsthand, and domestic and international green groups take notice. Although mobilization occurs across regimes, in democracies these groups can more effectively advocate for protection once mobilized. The adverse effects of resource dependence, therefore, mainly apply to less democratic countries, where extractive interests are most able to steer policymaking and mobilization is less likely to succeed. To test this argument, I employ a mixed-methods research design. I employ a novel panel regression discontinuity design at country borders for all terrestrial country-border pairs from 1992 to 2020, using new geospatial data on protected area (PA) designation over time. I find that the effect of natural resource dependence is conditional: when democratic institutions are weaker, natural resource dependence leads to less biodiversity protection. When democracy is stronger, natural resource dependence increases the likelihood that protected areas are established. I complement these results with a qualitative case study of the history of conservation in Costa Rica as a typical case for my mechanisms. These findings highlight the mitigating role that democratic institutions can play between natural resource dependence and biodiversity protection, and have important implications for our understanding of environmental politics and the role of mobilization among various actors in shifting policy.

Abstract:

A long-running debate in the international relations literature is whether international agreements are effective at producing domestic policy change. Much of this research focuses on national-level indicators of policy and the domestic political interests that are thought to influence it. However, there can be wide subnational variation in both policy changes and the strength of countervailing pressures. I apply this framework to protected areas, a key policy response to the biodiversity and climate crises that has significant distributive consequences over land use. Using an original geospatial dataset on 846 ecoregions worldwide from 1992—2020 combined with novel measures of anti-protection interests, I find that when a democracy becomes more deeply embedded in the international environmental regime, it is more likely to protect more land. However, local economic pressures do exert downward influence on protection. This subnational framework helps synthesize findings in the literature, and deepens our understanding of a critical area of environmental and land use politics.

Abstract:

The world is experiencing the increasingly destabilizing effects of climate change, but we currently know little about its effects on the quality of democracy. We argue that compounding climate shocks create conditions under which democratic resilience diminishes. The accelerated frequency and severity of climate-induced natural disasters and weather shocks, and their devastating economic and social consequences, have increased the likelihood and frequency of civil and political unrest, especially in contexts where climate-induced disasters compound and the government is unable to address citizen grievances. The necessity to respond to more frequent civil unrest and political instability increases the likelihood that governments rely on repressive measures that reduce democratic resilience. To test this argument, we explore whether compounded experiences with climate shocks increase the likelihood of a country experiencing a decline in democratic resilience. We find that the compounded effects of climate change significantly reduce the quality of democracy within the country. These findings have important implications for the future of democratic governance in a world increasingly confronted with the negative effects of climate change.

Abstract:

The rapid spread of information communication technologies across and within borders has been an important feature of the contemporary era, with the internet is at its core. Until recently, the widespread belief was that the internet would be beneficial for the spread and resilience of democracy. This common wisdom has become increasingly contested, as political actors in democracies and autocracies alike have learned to use the internet to maneuver information to enhance government popularity and suppress or delegitimate the opposition. We argue that open information access can be weaponized to reduce democratic resilience when duly elected leaders with anti-pluralist aspirations harness them to increase political polarization. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed-methods approach that combines a large-N quantitative comparative analysis of democratic backsliding in 97 democracies after the Cold War with a typical case study of democratic resilience in India to trace the underlying causal mechanisms of the theory. Together, the findings indicate that with growing access to the internet has come the increased likelihood of democratic backsliding, especially when anti-pluralist parties use them to increase polarization and executive power.