Cooperating within and Without: Environmental Treaties and Coalition Government

• In Event: Climate Change and International Collaboration

Abstract

As the literature that seeks to bridge the gap between International Relations (IR) and Comparative Politics (CP) continues to grow, this paper investigates the effect that coalitional government has on the signing and ratification of international environmental agreements (IEAs). Theorizing that international treaty participation is affected by both national and sub-national considerations, we model our research design to account for whether a state has a coalitional government at the time of signing or ratifying an IEA, the governing coalition’s ideological composition, and the number of coalition party members. Using an original dataset, we find three important results: that center-right coalitions tend to sign fewer IEAs than do center-left governments (both single party and coalitional), center-right governments are prone to ratifying fewer IEAs than center-left governments regardless of coalitional government, and that increasing the number of party members for center-right coalitions have a statistically significant effect of marginally reducing the number of IEA signatures.

Authors

• Nathan Henceroth, Albright College

• Michael W. Trevathan, Oregon State University