Environmental performance and policy regimes: Explaining variations

Abstract. Although we are witnessing an increasing interest in the comparative study of environ-mental pollution in the social sciences, there is sharp disagreement over how the state of the environment and the changes in recent decades should be assessed. Furthermore, the debate on environmental policy has no conceptual focus on societal development. Therefore, the article presents, on the one hand, an index of environmental pollution that integrates the levels of pollution in 1990 and their changes in the 1980s, and, on the other hand, an index that incorporates the ideological aspects of social development. Using this distinction it is possible to identify di¡erent paths of societal development in 18 OECD countries. The ¢nal part of the article explores various structural, economic, institutional and political characteristics which may be used to explain the di¡erent outcomes. The results show that institutional factors are important for a successful envi-ronmental performance. However, when it comes to change in policy regime the degree of mobi-lization of ecological movements and parties is essential. 1