Political Regimes and Climate Change: Learning from Past Civilisations

Author:

Grodsky Brian1

Affiliation:

1. Brian Grodsky is Professor of Comparative Politics at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research interests include democratisation, human rights, disaster management and US foreign policy. His four books are The Costs of Justice (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010); Social Movements and the New State: The Fate of Pro-Democracy Organizations When Democracy is Won (Stanford University Press, 2012); The Democratization Disconnect (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and The Democracy...

Abstract

As the world is threatened by new and powerful climate-driven hazards, how are states and societies likely to react? In this paper, I explore the role of regime type in determining the likelihood of state survival under extreme environmental conditions. I begin with a theoretical and empirical analysis of public goods provision under different regime types, finding no evidence for the contention that any one particular regime is superior to others. Following from this, I argue that the survival of the state under increased hazard conditions will at least partly be a function of political flexibility, with more democratic regimes better able to weather crisis than non-democratic ones. I explore this argument by analysing two historical cases of climate change: the non-democratic Maya civilisation in the first millennium and the quasi-democratic Icelandic state at the start of the second millennium. These historical cases highlight potential advantages to the democratic system in allowing states to survive a world with increased hazards but also underscore how rising competition and political instability can negatively impact those same democratic institutions. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Publisher

Liverpool University Press

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