Explaining National Environmental Performance : What Do We Know and What Should We Learn?

Although local, regional, and global institutions are critical to environmental policy success, national governments still arguably are the linchpin. This article examines and assesses the research on national environmental performance in four categories: economic growth and income; regime type, in terms of the level of democracy; the institutional characteristics of regime type; and institutional capacity. The research suggests that economic development and democratic governance are generally associated with environmental policy success, although not for all problems and in all settings. Development creates the conditions for encouraging and enabling societies to respond to environmental problems, while also creating an additional set of challenges for environmental quality. The effects of the institutional characteristics of democratic regimes are unclear, although there is evidence that the new and complex demands of environmental sustainability are managed more successfully within systems having an ability to integrate environmental, economic, and political/social choices. The existing research provides a valuable foundation for additional efforts to understand and explain national environmental performance.