Limiting political discretion and international environmental policy coordination with active lobbying
Limiting political discretion and international environmental policy coordination with active lobbying
We address two concerns: trade liberalisation may lead to a race-to-the bottom in environmental standards; supra-national agencies, who might overcome this, may be captured by special interest groups. This raises two sets of choices: whether to set environmental policy at the national or supra-national level, and whether to limit political discretion by agencies. In Johal and Ulph (2001a) we showed that policy should always be set at the supra- national level, whether or not political
discretion was limited, and that it would never pay to limit political discretion at the supra-national level unless it was also limited at the national level.
In that paper there were exogenous probabilities of agencies being captured by one group or another. In this paper the probabilities of capture depend on the lobbying efforts of interest groups. We show that the results of Johal and Ulph (2001a) are robust to the introduction of active lobbying.
strategic environmental policy, international policy coordination, supra-national
agencies, special interest groups, lobbying, limiting political discretion, constitutional choices
University of Southampton
Johal, Surjinder
149fcba2-9742-42f2-8571-3ee24282173a
Ulph, Alistair
82a2f3b8-ac72-4d0e-85cc-2760eb99b117
2002
Johal, Surjinder
149fcba2-9742-42f2-8571-3ee24282173a
Ulph, Alistair
82a2f3b8-ac72-4d0e-85cc-2760eb99b117
Johal, Surjinder and Ulph, Alistair
(2002)
Limiting political discretion and international environmental policy coordination with active lobbying
(Discussion Papers in Economics and Econometrics, 212)
Southampton, UK.
University of Southampton
Record type:
Monograph
(Discussion Paper)
Abstract
We address two concerns: trade liberalisation may lead to a race-to-the bottom in environmental standards; supra-national agencies, who might overcome this, may be captured by special interest groups. This raises two sets of choices: whether to set environmental policy at the national or supra-national level, and whether to limit political discretion by agencies. In Johal and Ulph (2001a) we showed that policy should always be set at the supra- national level, whether or not political
discretion was limited, and that it would never pay to limit political discretion at the supra-national level unless it was also limited at the national level.
In that paper there were exogenous probabilities of agencies being captured by one group or another. In this paper the probabilities of capture depend on the lobbying efforts of interest groups. We show that the results of Johal and Ulph (2001a) are robust to the introduction of active lobbying.
More information
Published date: 2002
Additional Information:
JEL classification: D72, F02, F12, F18, Q28
Keywords:
strategic environmental policy, international policy coordination, supra-national
agencies, special interest groups, lobbying, limiting political discretion, constitutional choices
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 33383
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/33383
PURE UUID: 4cf60729-6051-4835-81ea-6c5469b99ef3
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 22 May 2006
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 07:43
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Contributors
Author:
Surjinder Johal
Author:
Alistair Ulph
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