Democracy and Environmental Degradation in the MENA Region 1972-2015

Abstract
This paper aims at studying the relationship between democracy and environmental degradation. The empirical analysis focuses on the relationship between two indicators of democracy: A combined index of political rights and civil liberties (as an independent variable) based on freedom house data; and an implied emission factor for CO2 (per capita) caused by the forest (as a dependent variable) in a cross-section data analysis at the World level (184 countries) in Year 2015, Both the cross –section ARDL Model and Panel VECM (Vector Error Correction Model) were used as well as Wald test, the Panel DOLS (Dynamic OLS) model and the FMOLS (Fully –Modified OLS) model.
After performing the Fisher-Johansen Test with the panel data of the MENA Region during the period (1972-2015). the study demonstrated that democracy had a positive effect in reducing environmental degradation in the long run- based on a cross-section data analysis of the whole world (184 countries) and the MENA Region. The study also revealed the direction of the relationship between democracy and environmental degradation in the MENA region which was emphasized by the Granger causality test .This means that more democracy reduces environmental pollution in both the short term and the long term.