Autocratic angels? Democratic demons?

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This paper examines whether differences in effective environmental policies that achieve targets can be linked to political regimes, economic development levels, or state capacity. The analysis utilizes a cross-sectional time-series dataset of approximately 132 countries from 2000 to 2010, with the Ecosystem Vitality index from the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) as the dependent variable. Contrary to expectations, the findings do not consistently show that democratic regimes are more effective than autocratic ones in meeting environmental targets. The role of state capacity is ambiguous, as higher capacity does not necessarily lead to improved environmental protection. However, democratic states with increasing capacity tend to be less detrimental to the environment compared to their autocratic counterparts. In contrast, economic development emerges as the strongest predictor of environmental performance: while developing economies struggle to meet targets, surpassing a certain threshold leads to a positive correlation with environmental friendliness. This effect is more pronounced in democracies, suggesting that public preferences in democratic systems are more significantly shaped by economic development than those of autocratic leaders.