Abstract
In this paper, we investigate how former colonies’ legal origins affect environmental policy outcomes. In particular, does it matter for climate change policies whether a country has French civil law or British common law legal heritage? In a cross section of up to 109 countries, we find that civil law countries tend to have stricter climate change policies than common law countries.
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Notes
We thank a referee for pointing this out.
Note that LOT does not argue that one form of legal origin is always closer to optimal (La Porta et al. 2008).
Due to the sample selection of non-European former colonies, no Scandinavian legal origin countries are included.
We opted to use the data by Klerman et al. (2011) because they take into account that countries with two sequential colonial rulers with different legal origin have a “mixed” heritage. The legal origin in such colonies is therefore unclear. Our results are robust to using the classification by La Porta et al. (2008).
The democratic capital stock accumulates in years in which a country is a democracy (an increase of one) but not when an autocracy. Democratic capital depreciates a rate of \((1-\updelta )\) per year, and we assume \((1-\updelta )=0.06\), following Fredriksson and Neumayer (2013). Let \(z_{i,t}\) be the stock of democratic capital of country i in year \(t; a_{i,t}\) takes a value of unity in years when country i is a democracy; zero otherwise. Democratic capital thus accumulates according to \(z_{i,t} =a_{i,t} +\updelta z_{i,t-1}\), where \(z_{i,t_0}=0\) The resulting values are rescaled to lie in the range 0 to 1 (by multiplying all calculated values by \((1-\updelta ))\).
Multicollinearity is not a problem according to the variance inflation factor in the two models (in Tables 1, 3) in which we simultaneously enter Education1960 and Education2005 (VIF values range from 1.25 to 5.92 and 1.27 to 5.93, respectively; there is little to no concern if the values are below 10, see Chen et al. 2003).
In Models 1 and 2 we restrict the sample to democracies only, defined as countries with a positive polity2 score (Marshall and Jaggers 2007).
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The authors thank two insightful and helpful referees and the participants of the Beyond IPCC—Future Paths for Climate Research conference in Gothenburg, November 2014, for comments and suggestions, and Tobias Böhmelt for kindly sharing data and for clarifications. Fredriksson is grateful for financial support from the College of Business, University of Louisville. The usual disclaimers apply.
Appendices
Appendix 1
See Table 4.
Appendix 2: Data Description
Climate Change Cooperation Index (CCCI). A measure that examines the overall performance of countries’ climate policies in terms of political behavior and emissions. Source: Bernauer and Böhmelt (2013).
CCCI Policy. A measure that examines countries’ commitment to more cooperative national and international policies that contribute to the global environmental public good (climate policies). Source: Bernauer and Böhmelt (2013).
Manufacturing%. Percentage of a country’s GDP engaged in the manufacturing sector. The measure is average over a five year period from 2004–2008. Source: World Bank (2012).
GDPpc. Per capita gross domestic product in current US dollars averaged from 2004–2008. Source: World Bank (2012).
Democratic Capital. A measures that examines the stock of democracy in a country from 1800 to 2010. Source: Fredriksson and Neumayer (2013).
Institutions. The average of the six measures of institutional development from 2004–2008. Source: Worldwide Governance Indicators from Kaufman et al. (2010).
Corruption. The lack of corruption or use of public power for personal gain averaged from 2004–2008. Source: Worldwide Governance Indicators from Kaufman et al. (2010).
Latitude. The absolute value of the latitude of the country scaled between 0–1. Source: La Porta et al. (1999).
LifeExpectancy1960. Life expectancy in 1960. Source: Barro and Lee (1994) and Klerman et al. (2011).
Education1960. Education levels in 1960. Source: Barro and Lee (1994) and Klerman et al. (2011).
Motor Vehicles/Cap. The number of motor vehicles including cars, buses, and freight vehicle per 1000 people. Source: World Bank (2012).
French Civil Law LO. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the country has a civil law systems. Source: Klerman et al. (2011).
Common Law LO. A dummy equal to 1 if the law is based on common law traditions. Source: Klerman et al. (2011).
Mixed LO. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the country has legal systems that has been influenced by the French civil law systems and typically by the British common law system and a later date. Source: Klerman et al. (2011).
German LO. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the law is based on Germanic law traditions. Source: Klerman et al. (2011).
Islamic LO. A dummy equal to 1 if the legal system is based on sharia law. Source: Klerman et al. (2011).
Proportional System. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the winning party needs to gain a majority of the districts to gain power and Democratic equals 1. Source: Persson and Tabellini (2002).
Parliament System. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the country has a parliamentary form of government. Source: Persson and Tabellini (2002).
Federalism. A dummy variable equal to 1 if the country has a federal political structure. Source: Forum of Federations (2005).
Honesty. A measure that measures the lack of corruption. Source: Kaufmann et al. (2003).
Tiers Dummy. A measure that takes a value of 1 if a country had three or more layers of government in the mid-1990s. Source: Treisman (2002).
Party Strength. The average age of the two largest government parties and main opposition party, or the subset of these. Source: Beck et al. (2001).
%Catholic. The proportion of the population practicing Catholicism. Source: La Porta et al. (1999).
Trust. The percentage of the population that believes strangers can generally be trusted. Source: World Value Survey from La Porta et al. (2008).
Power Distance Index. The extent in which less powerful members within a country expect and accept unequally distributed power. Source: Hofstede (1980) from La Porta et al. (2008).
Individualism. An index measuring the expectation that people look after themselves and their immediately families independent of other people. Source: Hofstede (1980) from La Porta et al. (2008).
Vulnerability. A measure to assess the relative vulnerability of countries to major climate change impacts rather than absolute ones. Source: Wheeler (2011).
Political Orientation. The percentage of years that both party of the chief executive and the largest party in congress have left or center political orientation in the years 1928–1995 (alternatively, starting when the country gained independence). Source: Botero et al. (2004).
Education2005. Average years of schooling for population aged 15 and over. Source: Barro and Lee (2010).
Appendix 3: Country List
Albania | Cyprus | Liberia | Serbia |
Angola | Djibouti | Lithuania | Sierra Leone |
Argentina | Dominican Republic | Macedonia, FYR | Singapore |
Armenia | Ecuador | Madagascar | Slovenia |
Azerbaijan | Egypt, Arab Rep. | Malawi | Solomon Islands |
Bangladesh | El Salvador | Malaysia | South Africa |
Belarus | Eritrea | Mali | Sri Lanka |
Benin | Ethiopia | Mauritania | Sudan |
Bhutan | Fiji | Mauritius | Swaziland |
Bolivia | Gabon | Moldova | Tajikistan |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Gambia, The | Mongolia | Tanzania |
Botswana | Georgia | Morocco | Thailand |
Brazil | Ghana | Mozambique | Togo |
Bulgaria | Guatemala | Namibia | Trinidad and Tobago |
Burkina Faso | Guinea | Nepal | Tunisia |
Burundi | Guyana | Nicaragua | Turkmenistan |
Cambodia | Honduras | Niger | Uganda |
Cameroon | India | Nigeria | Ukraine |
Cape Verde | Indonesia | Oman | United Arab Emirates |
Central African Republic | Iran, Islamic Rep. | Pakistan | Uruguay |
Chad | Jamaica | Panama | Uzbekistan |
China | Jordan | Papua New Guinea | Venezuela, RB |
Colombia | Kazakhstan | Peru | Yemen, Rep. |
Comoros | Kenya | Philippines | Zambia |
Congo, Rep. | Kyrgyz Republic | Russian Federation | Zimbabwe |
Costa Rica | Lao PDR | Rwanda | |
Cote d’Ivoire | Latvia | Saudi Arabia | |
Croatia | Lebanon | Senegal |
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Fredriksson, P.G., Wollscheid, J.R. Legal Origins and Climate Change Policies in Former Colonies. Environ Resource Econ 62, 309–327 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9957-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9957-2