Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Environmental Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envres

Intelligence, democracy, and international environmental commitment

Anastassia Obydenkova a,b, Raufhon Salahodjaev c,n
a

Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Center for Institutional Studies of National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Department of Economics, Westminster International University in Tashkent; Global Intelligence for Development Research and Analytics (GIDRA), Colibri
Law Firm, Uzbekistan
b
c

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 19 December 2015
Received in revised form
25 January 2016
Accepted 28 January 2016

This paper investigates the determinants of nations' commitment to environmental protection at the
international level by focusing on the role of national intelligence and the level of democracy. The national intelligence is measured by nations IQ scores. The ndings based on a sample of 152 nations
provide strong evidence that intelligence has statistically signicant impact on ratication of international environmental agreements, and the countries with IQ 10-points above global average are 23%
more likely to sign multilateral environmental agreements than others. The ndings also demonstrate
that it is the combination of high-level of intelligence of nations and democracy, that likely result in
international environmental commitments.
& 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
IQ
International environmental commitment
Greenhouse gas emission
Intelligence
International agreements
Democracy

1. Introduction
Over the past 250 years, the global temperature has risen by
0.85 C and the period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest
30-year period of the last 1400 years (Ahrens and Henson, 2015,
p. 507). This had crucial impact on biodiversity and ecosystem
processes. For example, the ice thickness in the central Arctic has
fallen by nearly 50% (Kwok and Rothrock, 2009). The average
mean ocean level has increased by 20 cm over the past century
and this increase has been greater than the average rate in the
course of past two thousand years. As a result, this has intensied
extreme weather events, such as tornadoes, oods and wildres.
The economic cost of changing weather with respect to agriculture
is incomputable, and consequently, the food security in many
countries is at risk.
Scholars are in general consensus that the driving force of the
global climate change has been the rapid greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions over the past century. Indeed, over the past ve decades
GHG emissions per capita in developed nations have been four times
higher than discharges per capita in low-income nations. Moreover,
the forecasts suggest that these emissions will rise up to 90% by
2030 and the GHG discharges from developing nations are projected
n

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: aobydenkova@fas.harvard.edu (A. Obydenkova),
rauf.s@colibrilaw.com (R. Salahodjaev).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2016.01.042
0013-9351/& 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

to accelerate by more than 2% per annum (Tamiotti et al., 2009).

As a result, GHG emissions have developed into far-reaching
problem in both high and poor income countries, as air pollution
has been related to decreased life satisfaction, increase in suicide
rates and poor health (Ferreira et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2011). For
example, Wen and Gu (2012), using multilevel prospective cohort
study based a nationally representative sample of Chinese elders,
show that exposure to air pollution may reduce life expectancy by
almost 4 years. Similarly, the negative effect of air pollution on life
expectancy has also been documented for Canada (Coyle et al.,
2003), the United States (Nevalainen and Pekkanen, 1998) and
Netherlands (Brunekreef, 1997).
The warnings of scholars and environmentalists concerning
greenhouse gas emissions have risen over the last decade as well
as appeals for the international commitment to reduce GHG
emissions and to foster multilateral response to climate change.
Consequently, a new set of studies has emerged that attempted to
shed light on the potential determinants of environmental policy
and multilateral cooperation regarding climate change (e.g. Fredriksson and Neumayer, 2013; Fredriksson and Wollscheid, 2014;
Neumayer, 2002a). By and large these studies document that democratic and political institutions, globalization and external
pressures have positive impact on environmental cooperation.
However, the nexus between democracy, intelligence, and environmental policy remain inconclusive.
In this study, we pursue to provide a novel evidence on the

A. Obydenkova, R. Salahodjaev / Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

empirical effect of intelligence on current GHG emission policies

and cooperation on climate change. Notably, we explore the effect
intelligence on cooperation on climate change, where intelligence
is measured, following Lynn and Vanhanen (2002), as nation's
average IQ. There are very scarce studies dedicated to the topic so
far. One of them provides an important rst exploration of IQemissions nexus, albeit concludes with the statement intelligence
is not necessarily a mitigating factor of greenhouse gas emissions
[and] we hope that this paper represents a foundation for future
research establishing clear causality between intelligence environmental emissions, if any [cursive is ours]. (Squalli, 2014, p. 38).
Indeed, there is a clear need to investigate further the nexus of
intelligence and environment from various perspectives. This paper aspires to contribute to further development of the discussion
by looking into the impact of intelligence on commitment to international treaties aimed to improve environment. This is a very
new aspect in environmental policy that had not yet been raised in
research or investigated otherwise: it calls into question the relationship between intelligence, democracy, and environmental
protection.
Moreover, the interrelationship between intelligence and GHG
are far from being simple. On the one hand, the intelligence is
strongly correlated with economic development (GDP per capita)
across nations. In its turn, as statistics presented above demonstrated, developed nations have four times higher GHG emissions
per capita than low-income nations. Therefore, it is possible to
conjecture that intelligence may indeed be negative or neutral in
relationship to this aspect of environment. On the other hand,
intelligence is also considered as a measure of human capital
across nations (Meisenberg and Lynn, 2011). Indeed, past explorations document that willingness to contribute to environmental quality is directly linked to the human capital stock of
individuals (Blomquist and Whitehead, 1998). Similarly, more recent studies report that intelligence and education predicts political orientations (Rindermann et al., 2012) such as likelihood to
vote for a party with environmental agenda (Deary et al., 2008).
Next, intelligence is also positively correlated with higher level
of democracy. The results of the debates on the nexus of intelligence, democracy and environment remain inconclusive so far,
pending for further investigation. Back to the 1990s, Ostrom
(1990) developed theory of polycentric governance that combines
aspects from both centralized non-democracies with decentralized
democracies. Further on, this discussion was deepened Ostrom
(2011) and her theory of local tyrannies: the case when political
regimes are solely responsible for environmental protection and
that might result in privileged access to resources. Indeed, recent
studies demonstrated that democracy may hypothetically have
different impact on environment. Democracy may increase search
for populism, on the one hand, but it may decrease rent-seeking,
on the other hand (Libman and Obydenkova, 2014).
As to democracy and populism, here the results can be more
ambiguous. Populism may encourage government to spend money
on more visible for electorate policies. That can be even more important objective within the context of the Great Recession started
in 2008 that still have its negative impacts on the population of
democratic states (especially democracies within the European
Union that faced austerity measures imposed by their own national governments). On the other hand, the civil society as an
element of democratic regime, is associated with environmental
activism and ecological thinking. Thus, populism may still encourage the democratic government to take care of environmental
issues.
In contrast to consolidated democracies, in a weak democracy
(or hybrid regimes) the efciency of environmental protection can
be ambiguous and depends on responsibility of national government and its attention to environmental issues (Libman and

83

Obydenkova, 2014).
Still, while the past research suggests that the ruling elite tends
to under-evaluate environmental goods to achieve rapid economic
growth and benet from foreign direct investments (FDI), there is
robust evidence that more intelligent [bureaucrats] demonstrate
less of a preference for smaller, immediate rewards versus larger,
delayed rewards (Shamosh and Gray, 2008; p. 296). Indeed, if
environmental quality is a luxury good, we may then conjecture
that its demand rises more than proportionally with regard to
intelligence. Indeed, the environmental protection has also longterm benet and might have lower visibility for electorate (even
more though within the context of the Great Recession).
Recent studies demonstrated close interaction between international politics and governmental actions and national support in
the regions with various levels of democracy (Obydenkova, 2008,
2012). Based on the nexus of international level and national
support, we conjecture that the factor that has high visibility is the
commitment to environmental protection at the international level. Therefore, signing international treaties might increase the
popularity of the national government (democracy search for
popular support) as long as the population of this state has higher
level of intelligence and therefore can evaluate positively the
governmental environmental commitments at the international
level. In other words, the intelligent population will understand
the importance of long-term benet commitments even if they
result in short-term economic pitfalls. Thus, a democratic government might wish to increase its' popularity for intelligent population and to gain their support and credibility. This conjunction is
even more important within the context of Great Recession, where
the choices of the national democratic governments are very important and risk-prone in terms of gaining popularity. Based on
this discussion, we conjecture the main hypothesis of this study:
The national government of a democratic state with high level
of intelligence of population, will be more supportive to demonstrate to this population its commitment to international agreements on environmental protection. Consequently, high-IQ societies would be inclined to pledge more resources to ecological
conservation (Salahodjaev, 2016) and to follow consumption patterns less destructive to the ecosystem vitality as intelligent individuals have longer time horizons (Potrafke, 2012). Similarly as
suggested by (Squalli, 2014, p. 34), more intelligent people are
less wasteful because they predict the long-term nancial (and by
extension potentially environmental) benets of current investments on environmentally friendly technologies, thus potentially
contributing to lower environmental emissions.
On the other hand, existence of market failures leads to inefcient use of natural resources that promotes rent seeking,
hinders welfare and reduces quality of life. And collective intelligence may effectively direct the actions of self-centered economic agents and may prevent bureaucrats from ignoring environmental concerns of the population (Minowitz, 2004). On the
other hand, past research suggests that cognitive able individuals
aim to achieve the efcient, competitive markets (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2012) and more likely to see the invisible hand, supporting policies that create prosperity (Jones, 2011, p. 53). For example, on the macroeconomic level, intelligence is negatively
correlated with corruption, crime and shadow economy factors
that are positively associated with greenhouse gas emissions
(Salahodjaev, 2015a).
Finally, Kanazawa's (2010, 2012) Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis (otherwise known as the intelligence paradox) posits
that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and
espouse evolutionarily novel preferences and values that our ancestors did not possess. Concerns for the environment are distinctly evolutionarily novel. Our ancestors during the Pleistocene
Epoch were not concerned about the environment at all, because

84

A. Obydenkova, R. Salahodjaev / Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

there was nothing to be concerned about. There were too few

humans on earth to do any signicant and lasting damage to the
environment, and our ancestors could not afford to be concerned
about such things because they were in a constant struggle for
survival. Thus the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals today are more likely to
espouse an evolutionarily novel value of environmentalism, as
they do with an equally evolutionarily novel value of representative democracy (Kanazawa, 2012, pp. 199204; Vanhanen,
2003). By extension, more intelligent populations (with higher
national IQs) are expected to be more committed to environmental
concerns than less intelligent populations (with lower national
IQs).
Our results show that when nation's IQ is one standard deviation above global average the predicted probability of ratifying
multilateral environmental agreement is 71%. The positive effect of
intelligence on environmental commitment retains its signicance
even when we control for other antecedents of international environmental commitment. Moreover, the unstandardized coefcient for IQ actually increases after the inclusion of the control
variables, which means that the other determinants of environmental commitment suppress the true effect of national IQ on
environmentalism.

Moreover, electorate in more advanced states may have higher

demand for environmental quality and thus the ruling elite is
more likely to sign international environmental agreements. To
control for level of economic development, the econometric model
incorporates logged GDP per capita.1 It is also essential to control
for past level of emissions as they may concurrently be related
with economic development, nation's IQ and ratication of environmental agreements.
We also control for major religious denominations. As suggested by Hope and Jones (2014, p. 49) Belief in world religions
such as Christianity and Islam may be expected to differentially
impact upon a person's perceptions of environmental issues and
the proposed solutions, particularly if these solutions. To test the
validity of our ndings, we also control for geographic endowments measured by absolute latitude and share of population
living in the tropics.

3. Method
Following conventional practice in cross-country studies, Eq.
(1) is specied to explore the effect of intelligence on environmental commitment.

DAi = 1 + 2 IQ i + 3 Xi + i
2. Data and methodology
2.1. Dependent variable
The dependent variable in this study is a binary variable that
takes value 1 if country has deposited its instrument of acceptance or ratied the Doha Amendment. The data is from United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Doha
Amendment (adopted: 8 December 2012) establishes a second
commitment period (201320) for the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.
The second commitment period (8 years) aims to reduce GHG
emissions by 18% below 1990 levels and is crucial to preserve
impetus of the ongoing efforts to address the negative consequences of climate change.
2.2. Intelligence
Turning to our main right hand side variable, as concerns the
intelligence measure, we rely on nation IQ scores from Lynn and
Vanhanen (2012). In their seminal work, Lynn and Vanhanen
(2002) have collected the single country studies in which IQ tests
have been carried out. The authors were able to compile a dataset
for intelligence scores for 81 countries. They have estimate national IQs by setting the IQ in UK at 100 (standard deviation 15)
and the scores for remaining nations were rescaled to this metric.
In their 2012 study, they estimated IQ scores for additional 111
countries all the geopolitical territories with population size
above 40,000. In this dataset, national IQ scores range from 60.1
(Malawi) to 107.1 (Singapore).
2.3. Other determinants of environmental commitment
The selection of control variables is mainly driven by arguments posited in the section above. First, past studies lend support
for the positive link between democracy and environmental
commitments (Neumayer, 2002b). We use average of civil rights
and political liberties as a proxy for democratic institutions. We
also control for the effect of English common law as past studies
show that countries with English legal system are associated with
better institutions (Treisman, 2000; Serra, 2006).

(1)

where DA is the acceptance of Doha Agreement by ith country; IQ

is the nation IQ score; X is a vector of control variables that may
affect the decision of a country to ratify Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA), including quality of political regime,
legal origin, economic development, past level of emissions, geographic and religious aspects; is a random error term. We use
Stata 11 for our statistical analysis. Summary statistics of the dependent and right hand sign variables and bivariate correlation
matrix are presented in Tables 1 and 2.

4. Main results
Table 3 provides the main econometric results of logistic regression estimates. Model (1) provides the coefcients for a simple
univariate regression where acceptance of Doha Amendments is
regressed only on intelligence levels. It is obvious that intelligence
has a very strong positive link with environmental commitment.
The coefcient for IQ is 0.094 and statistically signicant at the 1%
level. This coefcient indicates that nations with nation IQ 10-points
above global average are 23% more likely to sign MEA.2 The pseudoR2 statistics also shows that intelligence alone denes 14% of the
cross-national differences in acceptance of Doha Amendment.
In Model (2), we include democracy index and a dummy variable for nations with British civil law. In line with the ndings of
Neumayer (2002b), that democracy is positively associated with
ratication of multilateral environmental agreements. However,
institutional commitment is not associated with historical adoption of British civil law. While controlling for political regime and
past institutional origins slightly reduces estimate for IQ, it retains
its positive effect and signicance level.
Model (3) incorporates economic development (logged GDP
per person) and air pollution (logged per capita CO2 emissions).
Except for GDP per capita, air pollution is statistically signicant
and suggests that countries with higher levels of GHG emissions
are less likely to ratify international environmental agreements.
1

See http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/all.
we use the margins command to estimate the predicted probability of ratifying Doha Amendment at each level of intelligence
2

A. Obydenkova, R. Salahodjaev / Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

85

Table 1
Descriptive statistics.
Variable

Description

Source

Mean

Std. Dev.

Environmental commitment
Intelligence
Democracy
English civil law
Economic development
Emissions per capita (log)
Catholic
Protestant
Other religion
Tropics
Absolute latitude (log)

1 if country has ratied Doha agreement

Intelligence
Average of political rights and civil liberties
1 if English civil law
GDP per capita (log)
CO2 emissions log
Share of population catholic
Share of population protestant
Share of population other religion
Percentage of population living in tropical zones
Absolute latitude (log)

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Lynn and Vanhanen (2012)
Freedom House
La Porta et al. (1999)
World Banka
World Bank
Ashraf and Galor (2013)
Ashraf and Galor (2013)
Ashraf and Galor (2013)
Ashraf and Galor (2013)
Ashraf and Galor (2013)

0.396
83.944
4.607
0.332
9.109
0.662
31.424
21.938
31.466
0.368
2.905

0.490
10.794
1.991
0.472
1.222
1.585
35.666
35.164
31.792
0.434
0.959

See http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/all.

Table 2
Correlation matrix.

1 if country has ratied Doha agreement

Intelligence
Democracy
English civil law
GDP per capita (log)
CO2 emissions log
Share of population catholic
Share of population protestant
Share of population other religion
Percentage of population living in tropical zones
Absolute latitude (log)

II

III

IV

VI

VII

VIII

IX

XI

1.00
0.45
0.37
0.02
0.35
0.28
0.14
 0.26
0.00
 0.18
0.14

1.00
0.52
 0.25
0.76
0.73
0.07
 0.27
0.17
 0.50
0.58

1.00
0.04
0.44
0.37
0.33
 0.53
0.03
 0.19
0.35

1.00
 0.11
 0.08
 0.22
 0.04
0.20
0.24
 0.19

1.00
0.93
0.12
 0.11
 0.10
 0.47
0.47

1.00
0.00
 0.02
 0.01
 0.50
0.52

1.00
 0.50
 0.46
0.26
 0.20

1.00
 0.36
 0.26
0.06

1.00
0.02
0.11

1.00
 0.73

1.00

Table 3
Intelligence and environmental commitment: main results.

Intelligence (IQ)

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

0.0940nnn
(0.0172)

0.0885nnn
(0.0192)
0.2022nn
(0.0939)

0.1028nnn
(0.0260)
0.1932n
(0.1019)

0.0902nnn
(0.0179)

0.1289nnn
(0.0256)

0.1139nnn
(0.0334)
0.2070n
(0.1237)

0.1262nnn
(0.0346)
0.2260n
(0.1251)

0.3424nnn
(0.1151)

0.4900
(0.3818)

0.5669
(0.3942)
0.5919
(0.4016)
 0.5996nn
(0.2982)

0.5024
(0.4740)
0.6540
(0.4649)
 0.5946n
(0.3449)

0.8655n
(0.5027)
0.7005
(0.4762)
 0.6320n
(0.3529)

0.0560
(0.4269)
0.9083nn
(0.4320)
 0.4000
(0.3231)

 0.8372
(0.6916)
 0.6783nn
(0.3161)

 1.0036
(0.7125)
 0.7149nn
(0.3245)

 0.7641
(0.6658)
 0.3798
(0.3351)

(0.2992)

(1.4836)

 15.0417nnn
 14.3852nnn
(1.6193)

152
0.14

181
0.25

Democracy

(8)

IQnDemocracy
English civil law
GDP per capita (log)
Emissions per capita (log)

Muslim
Other religion

 0.6646
(0.6419)
 0.7568nn

Tropics
Absolute latitude (log)
 0.6342nnn
(0.2438)
Constant
 7.0897nnn
 15.7841nnn
(3.7756)

 8.5991nn
(1.6556)

(1.9834)

(4.5719)

(4.7433)

(3.9119)

 8.8813nnn
 8.8866nnn
 10.3100
(2.0206)

N
Pseudo-R2

190
0.14

185
0.18

178
0.20

186
0.16

159
0.18

152
0.21

 8.3029nnn

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

po 0.1.
p o0.05.
p o 0.01.

nn

nnn

0.1230nnn
(0.0291)
0.2501nn
(0.0988)
0.0153n
(0.0093)
0.6871
(0.4542)

 0.0060
(0.0088)
 0.0130
(0.0083)
 0.0126
(0.0091)

Catholic

(9)

150
0.25

86

A. Obydenkova, R. Salahodjaev / Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

More importantly, controlling for economic development does not

affect the estimate for IQ, suggesting that there is direct effect of
intelligence on acceptance of Doha Amendments.
Model (4) controls for the cross-country variations in religious
composition of the population (share of Protestants is the reference group). The results show that religious composition does
not have statistically signicant effect on nation's commitment to
environmental protection at the international level. We also separately control for geographic endowments in model (5). In both
cases, intelligence is positive and statistically signicant at the 1%
level.
Model (6) provides the specication that incorporates key
control variables, enabling the impact of intelligence and remaining antecedents of environmental commitment to be simultaneously estimated. This specication slightly increases the
estimated impact of intelligence on ratication of MEA, indicating
that statistically signicant association between IQ and environmental commitment is not driven by excluded variable distortions.
To test robustness of our ndings, model (7) provides estimates
when exclude the USA and Canada from the sample. The United
States is one of the countries with the highest level of GHG and has
not ratied the Kyoto protocol. Similarly, Canada withdrew from
Kyoto protocol on December 15th 2011. The results for intelligence
remain robust.
Moreover, we assess the effect of intelligence over and above
the effects of the control variables. To demonstrate that, we performed stepwise multiple regressions in which we regressed our
dependent variable on key control variables. The change in the
R-squared value would then indicate the proportion of variance
that can be uniquely attributed to intelligence. In Model 8 compared to the Model 6 the pseudo R-squared decreases by 7%.
Finally, we investigate whether the relationship between intelligence and environmental commitment differs with the level of
democracy in model 9. We test this by adding an interaction term
between democracy and IQ. We document that interaction term is
positive and statistically signicant, albeit at 10% level, indicating
that democracy leads to greater environmental commitment in
high IQ nations.
Thus, the estimates in Table 3 provide novel evidence that intelligence is signicantly related to nations commitment to environmental protection at the international level.

5. Robustness tests
To test validity of our ndings we run a number of robustness
tests. First, we re-estimate the effect of IQ on environmental
commitment using an alternative set of geographical control
variables: average temperature and a binary variable for Small
Island developing states (SIDS) (Table 4). For example, Fors (2014)
explores the link between island status and quality of institutions.
The author documents that SIDS are associated with more democratic institutions and stronger rule of law. To assess the tradeenvironment nexus we also include trade as a share of GDP as a
proxy for the trade liberalization policy (see e.g. Neumayer, 2000).
Further, rapid industrialization is associated with air pollution and
increase in acute respiratory infections (Chauhan and Johnston,
2003).3 Therefore, we may anticipate that ratication of MEA is a
function of manufacturing industry lobbying. Therefore, we add
employment in industry as a share of total employment to proxy
for industry lobbying. The results reported in model (1) suggest
3
Consequently, air pollution has negative implications for the society as it has
been related to childhood iron deciency (Rahman et al., 2012) and infant mortality
(Chay and Greenstone, 2003).

Table 4
Intelligence and environmental commitment: robustness test.

Intelligence (IQ)
Democracy
Trade as % of GDP
Employment in industry (log)
0.5199
Temperature
1 if SIDS

(1)

(2)

(3)

0.0932nnn
(0.0309)
0.2732nn
(0.1222)
0.0135nn
(0.0058)
 0.9144n

0.1791n
(0.0951)
 0.0500
(0.2737)
0.0227
(0.0140)

0.1448nn
(0.0675)
0.4419nnn
(0.1637)
0.0155nn
(0.0075)
 2.1306nn

(0.5542)
0.0181
(0.0327)
 0.6106
(0.7172)

(1.0478)
0.0529
(0.0689)
 0.6344
(1.3749)

(0.8346)
0.0466
(0.0459)
0.0070
(0.9593)
 8.1152nnn

(2.7331)

(6.8398)

43
0.14

88
0.27

Constant
 11.3451n
 18.9274nnn
(6.9493)

N
Pseudo-R2

131
0.21

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

n

p o 0.1.
p o 0.05.
po 0.01.

nn
nnn

that environmental lobbying has negative effect on ratication of

MEA. Trade openness is positively associated with nation's decision to contribute to the global effort to ght climate change.
Frankel (2009, p. 7) argues, [trade liberalization] could encourage
technical innovation, ratchet up environmental standards, or lead
to the exercise of consumer power and the adoption of corporate
codes of conduct. As earlier, intelligence has positive and statistically signicant association with ratication of MEA.
We also checked whether the positive effect of democracy and
intelligence differs in sub-samples. For example, Salahodjaev
(2015b) provides robust evidence that democracy has insignicant
effect on economic growth in low-IQ countries. Indeed, as suggested in Almond and Verba (1989, p. 315) [t]he uneducated man
or the man with limited education is a different political actor
from the man who has achieved a higher level of education. For
this reason, we have split the sample into two groups: high-IQ
nations and low-IQ nations. As anticipated in model (2), the
coefcient for democracy in insignicant in the regressions for the
countries with the average nation IQ below global average (84).
In contrast, model (3) demonstrates that democracy seems to
have strong positive and statistically signicant impact on the level of international environmental commitment. However, this
holds true for high-IQ countries. This nding is in line with above
mentioned theories on social capital, democracy, and long-run
benet projects (Almond and Verba, 1989; Ostrom, 1990; Libman
and Obydenkova, 2014). Along the lines with growing literature on
the consequences of democracy, the positive impact of democracy
on environmental reforms should not be surprising (Obydenkova
and Libman, 2015). However, what is important in the context of
discussion, is the critical role of democracy on environmental international commitment in the countries with high level of intelligence. Democracy provides for regular turnover of executives
and political powers in power that is dependent on how their
reforms had been evaluated by the population. It is the intelligence
of population in a democratic state that makes an important difference in such an evaluation of reform with long-run benet and
short-run cost. Should we consider a democratic state with lower
level of intelligence of population, the people would rather

A. Obydenkova, R. Salahodjaev / Environmental Research 147 (2016) 8288

Table 5
Intelligence and environmental commitment: robustness test.
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

IQ

0.1654nnn
(0.0571)

0.1322nn
(0.052)

0.1021nn
(0.0399)

0.1456nnn
(0.0396)

Excluded
region
N
Pseudo-R2

Africa

Asia

Europe

Latin America

102
0.32

108
0.35

112
0.13

137
0.28

Notes: The vector of control variables as in Table 3 included but not reported here;
Standard errors in parentheses.
n
p o 0.1.
nn
nnn

p o 0.05.
p o 0.01.

evaluate the quality of governance judging by short-run benets

and would ignore long-run costs. This would switch on the mechanisms of search of populism for a democratic government that
would abstain from high-cost international environmental commitments that would be associated with short-run austerity
measures. Thus, in lower level intelligence state, these reforms
would not be popular and democratic government would not engage in policy risking loosing electorate.
Finally, another geographical aspect is taken into concern,
namely genetic diversity of population. Past studies show that
genetic diversity predicts comparative economic development
across nations (Ashraf and Galor, 2013). Furthermore, in their recent study Kodila-Tedika and Asongu (2015) show that genetic
distance is a robust predictor of intelligence after controlling for
rich set of independent variables. Therefore, it is important to
control for the genetic distance/diversity as it may simultaneously
be correlated with intelligence and economic development (not
reported here).4 The results suggest that this is not the case. Intelligence is positive and statistically signicant at the 1% level.
To further test the robustness of our results with respect to
intelligence we also take into account potential heterogeneity
among nations in our sample. One may argue that the effect of IQ
on environmental commitment may differ across continents.
Therefore, we re-estimated the main results reported in Table 3 for
different sub-samples. The results reported in Table 5 are noticeably similar to the ones obtained for the full sample.

6. Conclusion
The analysis presented in this study contributes to better understanding of the nexus of national intelligence, consequences of
democracy, and commitment of national government to international environmental treaties. Our results suggest that developing
nations may benet from investing in cognitive abilities as the effect of democracy on environment depends on the level of national
IQ. Recent advances in empirical research also provide potential
policy suggestions to improve human capital (intelligence) in developing countries (e.g., Kaufman et. al, 2014; Eppig et. al., 2011).
The ndings presented in this paper also provide for further
arguments on the debated issue of impact of political regime on
environmental politics. The research on the consequences of political regimes in general and democracy in particular is highly
inconclusive with the regard to management of public resources.
The study contributes to answering the question on the channels
and mechanisms of the effects of political regime on the quality of
4

The results are available upon request.

87

management of public resources and the intervening of intermediary factors.

In other words, while indeed, as Squalli (2014) states the absence of clear connection intelligence and GHG emissions, we
contribute to understanding the nexus. First, the level of visibility
of reform of national government seems to matter a lot. National
reforms on environmental politics are high-cost and low-visibility;
also leading to possibility of increase of austerity measures within
the nancial crisis. However, the international commitment at the
highest global level provides for high visibility of actions of national government and are likely to be supported by highly intelligent population (nations with high level of IQ). Given it is still
high-cost reform, this commitment can be appreciated only by the
intelligent electorate. For this reason, national government takes
the risk of such a commitment even in the period of great
recession.

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