New evidence reveals curvilinear relationship between levels of democracy and deforestation

Deforestation is highly damaging to the global climate system and biodiversity. It varies strongly across countries and time, and is driven by several idiosyncratic as well as structural factors. Political regime types belong to the latter. Some studies suggest that more democratic countries are associated with lower rates of deforestation, whereas others report that such states might well be related to more clearing of forested land. We contribute to resolving the currently mixed evidence by re-examining, extending, and contextualizing the findings of one of the most recent empirical studies on how democracy affects deforestation. Based on a comprehensive empirical analysis using different data sources and estimation procedures, we show that levels of democracy are linked to deforestation in a U-shaped, curvilinear way: deforestation rates are less strongly pronounced in both the least and the most democratic states, but higher in partial democracies. In this U-shaped curve, however, the most democratic countries have a better forest-conservation record than states with lower democracy scores.