political econ - environmental policy

8/9/2019 Political Econ - Environmental Policy

1/24

Political Economics and

Environmental Policy

Lecture 4

Political agency


2/24

Today

• Does it matter who represents us?

• Citizen candidate model

• Washington paper

– Do the values of politicians matter?

– Can the values of politicians change?

• RAS-Model (go through it properly

• What explains environmental values?

• Assignment 1

• Next Week


3/24

Does it matter who represents us?

• In the standard median model we have policy

convergence

– Who represents us does not matter

• However, a common belief is that is does

– Gender quotas

– Minority representation

• Why should it matter?

• Does it matter?


4/24

Citizen Candidate Model

• Who decides to run for office?

• Does it matter who runs?

•

Start with the standard median voter model• Assume that policians will always implement

their ideal policy

•

Voters can observe a politicians ideal policypoint

• Who will run?


5/24

Ebonya Washington’s paper

• What questions does the paper aim to

address?

– How do daughters affect their fathers’ voting

behaviour

• What other questions does it answer?

– Does the identity of politicians matter?

•Or do they all converege to the median?

– Can the values of politicians change/be affected

through socialization


6/24

• How does the paper answer the question? – Compares voting record between representatives with

sons to those with daughters

•What measures of the key parameters areused

– Voting record measures from interest group scores and

directly from votes

• Do these measures make sense?

– Same problem as previous week, does not look at voting

behaviour, not policy outcomes


7/24

• What is the empirical strategy

– What are the main challenges

• Endogenuity problems

– Certain voter groups might prefer politicians with big families

• Measurement problems

– Only in outcome variable

– Identification strategy

• How is the problem solved

– Given family size what is the share/number of daughters

• Strengths and weaknesses of approach

– Differential ”stopping rule”


8/24

• What question does the paper answer?

– The one it sets out to

• Do you believe the results of the paper?

• What can we learn from the paper?


9/24

Zallers RAS-model

• Two individual dimensions of how an

individual’s opinions are shaped

– Knowledge

– Predispositions

• Determines both how individual reacts to

information and how they express their

opinion


10/24

Political Predispositions

• People underlying values preferences

• Determine what communication/information

an individual will reject/accept

• Individuals commonly hold opinions that are

inconsistent with their predispositions


11/24

Knowledge/Awareness

• Has two roles in forming people’s opinions

• Influences people’s opinions prior to receiving

information

• A mediating factor between communication

and opinions


12/24

Considerations

• Accepted information becomes considerations

• A person might hold several and conflicting

considerations on an issue

– Climate Change

– Nuclear power

– Off shore drilling


13/24

Changing Preferences

• Short term preferences driven by considerations

• Information on issue changes both salience of an

issue but also what type of consideration one

holds

– Heat spells

– Gas prices

• We can see quick changes inpreferences/considerations

– Important for elections


14/24

Environmental attitudes

• What explains people environmental

attitudes?

– Both politicians and voters

• How are they related to other

attitudes/preferences?

• Why do we care?

– Voting behavior

– Preferences of politicians


15/24

Different Views

• Unrelated to other issues

– An independent policy dimension

– Post-materialistic issue

• Closely related to other issues

– Different types of world views underlies

preferences on many types of policies

– Different types of policy intervention will be

related to other types of policy interventions


16/24

Ellis & Thompson

• Examines how demographic traits, cultural

values and political self identification is

related to environmental values

• Uses Surveys

• Estimates relationships simultaneously

• Covers both general population and

environmental activists


17/24

Demographic Variables

• Four Variables

– Age

– Education

– Gender

– Income

• What do we expect to find?

• What do they find


18/24

Cultural Values

• Three types of values

– Egalitarianism

– Individualism

– Hierarchy




19/24

Political Self Identification

• Three measures

– Ideology

– Republican

– Democrat




20/24

What can we learn

• What can we learn from the paper?


21/24

Guth et al.

• Examine how religious beliefs and Attitudes

are related to attitudes on environmental

policy

• Uses survey data


22/24

• Why should religious values matter?

• What do they find?


23/24

Environmental values amongst

politicians

• What do you think explains politicians

attitudes to environmental policy

• Does it matter for policy outcomes


24/24

Next Week

• Institutions (chapter 11)

• Electoral Systems (chapter 7)

– Proportional – Majoritarian

• Legislative Organization (chapter 16)

– Parliamentary – Presidential

•

Emergence of Green parties (Rohrscheiderpaper)

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