| dc.description.abstract | The increasing instability of the environment on which we humans depend is a vital political concern, and environmental policies are tools for governments to regulate human impact on the natural world. To increase the stringency of these policies has been found to have positive effects on emission rates and air pollution. However, we do not have extensive knowledge on which political factors that lead to more stringent environmental policies. In this thesis I aim to examine a piece of this puzzle: whether these policies are influenced by the formation of veto points, and whether the influence of veto points is contingent on corruption levels. I argue that the difficulties with policy-making that leads to more stringent policies grow as the number of veto points increases, and as their preferences deviate. Moreover, corruption is known to ’grease the wheels’ for both anti-environmental interests and pro-environmental interests which can impact the adoption of policies. Additionally, corruption influences the implementation of environmental policies. I therefore argue that corruption can influence the relationship between the formation of veto points and environmental policy stringency. I test two hypotheses on cross-sectional time-series data with two-way fixed effects OLS regressions, and clustered standard errors. The results reveal little support for a direct relationship between veto points and environmental policy stringency. However, the results give strong support for a relationship conditional on corruption levels. With low corruption, the increase in political constraints is associated with an increase in the strictness of environmental policies. On the contrary, when corruption levels are high, the increase in political constraints is associated with a reduction in stringency. The findings in this thesis suggest that to understand how veto points can influence the strictness in environmental policies, it is essential to include the interplay with corruption. | eng |