Abstract

For several decades, cross-national scholars have aimed to understand why democracy tends to be related to increased forest loss, despite theory suggesting the exact opposite directional relationship. Recently, Sanford (2021 Sanford, L. 2021. “Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Evidence from Deforestation.” American Journal of Political Science doi: 10.1111/ajps.12662.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) finds that closer elections in democratic nations tend to increase forest loss. The author attributes this finding to be the result of clientelism or the targeted distribution of goods, services, jobs, and money in exchange for the political support of a candidate. However, we are not aware of any cross-national research that considers if higher levels of clientelism are related to increased forest loss in low- and middle-income nations. To fill this gap, we analyze data for 80 low- and middle-income nations using a two-stage instrumental variable regression model. We find that higher levels of clientelism correspond with increased forest loss after controlling for various economic, political, and demographic factors hypothesized to explain it.

摘要

几十年来，跨国学者一直致力于理解为什么民主往往与森林损失增加有关，尽管理论表明两者之间存在完全相反的关系。最近，桑福德 ( 2021 桑福德，L.2021。“民主化、选举和公共物品：森林砍伐的证据。” 美国政治学杂志doi：10.1111/ajps.12662。[交叉引用]、[PubMed]、[Web of Science®]  、[Google 学术搜索]）发现民主国家的选举越紧密，往往会增加森林损失。作者将这一发现归因于庇护主义或有针对性地分配商品、服务、工作和金钱以换取候选人的政治支持的结果。然而，我们不知道有任何跨国研究考虑过较高程度的依附主义是否与低收入和中等收入国家的森林损失增加有关。为了填补这一空白，我们使用两阶段工具变量回归模型分析了 80 个低收入和中等收入国家的数据。我们发现，在控制了各种假设的经济、政治和人口因素后，依附主义程度越高，森林损失就越大。