Democratization drives the adoption of national agri-environmental policies

Abstract Is democratic governance a key driver of environmental policy in the agricultural sector? We address this question using a global dataset covering national-level agri-environmental policies and regime transitions between autocracy and democracy from 1961 to 2021. Our empirical strategy employs a difference-in-differences estimator within an event-study framework to identify the causal impact of democratization on the adoption of agri-environmental policy measures. The results show that democratic transitions lead to a significant increase in the adoption of such policies. In the short to medium run (within six years), democratization causes a +25% increase in the number of agri-environmental policies compared to a counterfactual scenario under autocracy. In the long run, this effect persists and is likely to grow further. These newly implemented policies predominantly address biodiversity protection, fertilizer use, forest conservation, and soil erosion. We find no systematic evidence of heterogeneous effects among democracies based on characteristics such as government type, electoral system, levels of political corruption, or international integration. The relevance of these findings is heightened by current global political developments, as many democracies are experiencing institutional backsliding. Future research should directly examine how such developments influence the adoption of environmental policies.