The Political Origins of the Tragedy of the Commons: Deforestation in Brazil

• In Event: The Political Economy of Deforestation

Abstract

The politics behind common-pool resource management are not well-understood. Using detailed satellite imagery data, I examine the effects of local political competition on deforestation across municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon, 2000-2012. I use the competitiveness of elections at higher levels of government to construct a shift-share instrument for causally estimating competition in municipal elections. The results show that although the median voter in the Amazon has a strong preference for environmental conservation, local political competition encourages the destruction of ``the commons'' (i.e., increases deforestation). Drawing on interviews with bureaucrats and activists, I illustrate the ways in which ``activist fatigue'' and bureaucratic turnover explain this effect. Political turnover induces accompanying turnover in bureaucratic structures, discouraging activists from mobilizing for conservation. To further test this mechanism, I code an original database of local protests and show that the findings cannot be explained by alternative theories related to partisanship, federal monitoring of local governments, nor local agricultural development. The analysis provides systematic and causal evidence of the political origins of the ``tragedy of the commons.''

Author

• Alice Z Xu, Harvard University