Image: Fish surrounded by plastic in ocean. Naja Bertolt-Jensen, Unsplash.
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
How legislatures have protected the environment by passing key environmental legislation.
WHAT WE EXPECT TO LEARN
What role legislatures play in environmental policymaking, and how this role changes between different regime types. The main enablers and barriers to legislative action on environmental issues. What donors can do to support legislative leadership on environmental issues.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Over the past two decades, the notion that ‘environmental authoritarianism’ might be a more productive way of tackling environmental issues than the participatory and deliberative democratic mode of governance has become a hotly debated topic in both public and academia (for example, see Mittiga 2021; Han 2015; Beeson 2010). Yet there have been few systematic studies of this topic based on cross-regional data. This project will provide valuable insights into this question – and to the broader role of legislatures in providing leadership on environmental issues, by examining formal environmental action across different regime types. Given the scope of environmental issues faced by governments the world over, the project narrows its focus on the issue of single-use plastics and one increasingly popular policy option – a single-use plastic ban. Combining desk-based research with data analysis and semi-structured elite interviews, the project will examine the role legislatures play in enacting the bans.
The report Legislative leadership for environmental issues from this project is now available!
WHO’S INVOLVED, WHERE
- Petra Alderman, University of Birmingham
- Nic Cheeseman, University of Birmingham
- David Hudson, University of Birmingham
- Graeme Ramshaw, Westminster Foundation for Democracy
CHECK OUT THE REPORT FROM THIS PROJECT
Legislative leadership on environmental issues – WFD report
RESEARCH COUNTRIES
Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Brazil, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US)
OF INTEREST TO PEOPLE WORKING ON
Legislative leadership; environmental democracy; plastics
