Replication data for: Democracy and Environmental Degradation

Our discussion of the theoretical literature identifies different causal mechanisms through which democracy could affect environmental degradation. The empirical analysis focuses on the net effect of these competing mechanisms. We examine statistically the effect of democracy on five aspects of human-induced environmental degradation—carbon dioxide emissions, nitrogen dioxide emissions, deforestation, land degradation, and organic pollution in water.

We find that democracy reduces all five types of environmental degradation. While the substantive effect of democracy is considerable, it varies in size across different types of environmental degradation. We also find nonmonotonic effects of democracy that vary across the environmental indicators.