The Nation-State and the Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century

TLDR

National environmental protection activities have risen, traditionally attributed to domestic degradation and affluence. The study proposes a top‑down causal framework that frames environmental protection as a fundamental state responsibility defined globally. The authors employ event‑history analyses of five indicators—national parks, international association chapters, memberships in intergovernmental bodies, environmental impact assessment laws, and environmental ministries—to test the hypothesis. Results show that the global, top‑down explanation better predicts environmentalization than domestic factors, especially in countries with strong world‑society ties, indicating that nation‑state environmental policies are first shaped by global institutions before being adopted locally.

Abstract

National activities to protect the natural environment are on the rise. Conventional explanations of the phenomenon emphasize domestic processes, set in motion by environmental degradation and economic affluence. We propose instead a top-down causal imagery that hinges on a global redefinition of the to include environmental protection as a basic state responsibility. We test our view using event-history analyses offive indicators of environmentalization: the proliferation of (]) national parks, (2) chapters of international environmental associations, (3) memberships in intergovernmental environmental organizations, (4) environmental impact assessment laws, and (5) environmental ministries in countries around the world over the twentieth century. For allfive measures, the top-down global explanation proves stronger than the bottom-up domestic alternative: The global institutionalization of the principle that nation-states bear responsibility for environmental protection drives national activities to protect the environment. This is especially true in countries with dense ties to world society and prolific receptor sites, even when controlling for domestic degradation and affluence. It appears that blueprints of nation-state environmentalization, which themselves become more universalistic over time, are drawn in world society before being diffused to and enacted by individual countries.