Environmental Politics in Authoritarian Regimes: Waste Management in the Russian Regions

Abstract

Russian regions display a significant variation in terms of waste management efforts. This is puzzling considering the importance of waste management for all regional governments and the urgency of the problem for the Russian public as reflected in opinion polls. We study whether more authoritarian regional governments in Russia are better able to solve the problem of waste management. Using a regional panel data set for the period of 2012-2019, we find that our measure of the degree of authoritarianism – the share of votes for the United Russia party in parliamentary elections – has a strong positive effect on the share of recycled waste in the Russian regions. This result indicates that more authoritarian regions tend to recycle more household waste than less authoritarian regions. This finding is consistent with the theory of environmental authoritarianism that suggests that authoritarian governments are better able to tackle environmental challenges.