The Politics of Environmental Performance Institutions and Preferences in Industrialized Democracies

As the world faces the prospect of climate change, nuclear disasters, and water scarcity, it is clear that environmental degradation is an increasingly serious challenge with economic and social consequences. In this book, Detlef Jahn analyzes political processes in a macro-comparative study in order to estimate the role of politics in the field of environmental performance in twenty-one OECD countries. His model demonstrates various styles of politics used to combat environmental degradation. He finds that economic and environmental performance are still closely linked, and that moving towards a service society does not by itself solve the environmental challenge. The close relationship of these areas was made strikingly clear in the economic crisis of the new millennium. He argues that economic globalization fosters environmental deterioration, and undermines efforts in domestic politics and international coordination to improve the environmental record.

1. Introduction; Part I. Approach, Method, and Concepts: 2. Explaining environmental performance; 3. Preferences in environmental politics; 4. The institutional settings in twenty-one OECD countries; Part II. Environmental Performance in twenty-one OECD Countries: 5. Measuring environmental performance; 6. Aggregating environmental performance data; Part III. Analysis: 7. Domestic politics; 8. International politics; 9. The nexus of domestic and international politics; 10. Conclusion.

Detlef Jahn is a professor of comparative politics at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald, Germany, and a permanent fellow of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe 'The Transformative Power of Europe' of Freie Universität Berlin. He is a board member of the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) and for the Sustainable Government Index (SGI) of the Bertelsmann Foundation. He has published in International Organization, the Socio-Economic Review, the European Journal of Political Research, and Weather, Climate and Society (WCAS) of the American Meteorological Society. He is also the author of New Politics in Trade Unions (1993).