Exploring the Impact of Political Regimes on Biodiversity

National governments are the main actors responsible for mapping and protecting their biodiversity, but countries differ in their capacity, willingness, and effectiveness to do so. We quantify the global biodiversity managed by different regime types and developed a tool to explore the links between level of democracy and other key socio-economic variables with the number of natural history specimens registered within country boundaries. Using this tool, distinct and previously unknown patterns emerge around the world, that urge for increased collaboration between the natural and social sciences to further explore these patterns and their underlying processes.We thank Rafaël Govaerts for providing the plant data from WCSP. The research presented in this paper is a contribution to the strategic research area Biodiversity and Ecosystems in a Changing Climate, BECC. Funding was provided by iDiv/sDiv via the German Research Foundation (DFG FZT 118) to AZ; the Centre for Collective Action Research to OR; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Grant M13- 0559:1), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Grant 2013.0166) and the European Research Council (Grant 724191) to SIL; internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg to SIL and SJ; the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to AA