Liberal democracy and sustainability

Although theory strongly suggests that liberal democracies should perform better than autocracies on sustainability indicators, the empirical evidence is unclear. Using multivariate statistical techniques, political factors such as the stability of the system, public opinion, the nature of the party system and other institutional features such as presidentialism are considered. Liberal democracy is given qualified endorsement: it typically promotes weak sustainability, and stable core autocracies perform worse on strong sustainability measures than stable core democracies. Presidentialism generally is bad for sustainability. However, there is no compelling evidence that public opinion matters, even allowing for the intervening effects of the party system and institutional structure, which raises questions about the nature of the democratic process.

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