The list of autocratization episodes I have used for this research is identical to the list used by Van Lit & Van Ham (2025, pp. 142–144). Van Lit & Van Ham used Varieties of Democracy’s (V-Dem) dataset to construct episodes of democratic recession. They used a procedure whereby they measured change in countries’ Electoral Democracy Index (EDI) score over time. Democratic recession episodes were identified when there was a sharp drop in electoral democracy from one year to the next, after which the country stabilized at a new, lower level of democracy; or when countries’ electoral democracy score gradually and continuously declined over successive years. In both cases, a decline in the EDI larger than 10% was considered to constitute substantial evidence for autocratization. By narrowing down the list to only include cases of incumbent-led democratic recession, their final list contains 53 autocratization episodes, which have taken place in 46 different countries.

For measuring environmental performance, I use the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) dataset (Block et al., 2024). There are other options, such as the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) and the Quality of Government Environmental Indicators Dataset (QoG-EI), but I ended up choosing EPI because it is most applicable for this research. The CCPI does not contain enough countries and QoG-EI does not have more recent data than 2020. The EPI dataset has a general environmental performance variable, but this variable cannot be used as part of a time series analysis due to asynchronicity in the underlying data. I therefore use an individual indicator, namely the CDA variable. This variable has the highest weight within the climate change-related component of the general environmental performance variable. It has data from 1999 until 2022, so for most of the listed autocratization, the CO₂ trend can be analyzed using this variable. Note that a higher value for the CO₂ variable means there is a lower CO₂ emissions trend; therefore, higher values are better.

Apart from these datasets, I have used other sources too for each country’s description. In order to describe the autocratization which has occurred in a country, I note the labels used by Freedom House (such as “partly free”) and by V-Dem (such as “electoral autocracy”), respectively. When possible, I also use journal articles to indicate how the autocratization and the environmental policies and performance have been described by scholars. Additionally, I sometimes use news sources to highlight certain specific examples or characteristics of the autocratization and the environmental policies and performance. I also use sources from NGOs such as human rights-related and environmental organizations.

Regarding the literature on autocratization and environmental performance, I used academic literature as the starting point. This is especially useful for the literature on autocratization, because academic literature on autocratization tends to align with the way in which this project understands the concept of autocratization. It is also useful for the literature on environmental performance, because it allows for deeper patterns related to environmental performance to be discussed, such as climate skepticism or deregulation. After having used academic litierature, I look up information stemming from reports from NGOs when I encounter them (e.g. when it is referenced in the academic literature). These reports are useful for typically containing a lot of specific information. Lastly, I have looked at news reports for specific information on certain events, such as legislation which has been passed.

For each country, a chart is displayed, which shows the country’s score for the aforementioned CDA variable (measuring CO₂ performance) over time. A part of the chart is highlighted, which shows the episode(s) of autocratization. This allows me to analyse for each country to what extent the autocratization episode(s) has/have an effect on the CO₂ performance. This list shows the countries included in the paper. The list also shows the relevant episode(s) of autocratization per country based on the ERT dataset and based on the figure created by Van Lit & Van Ham (2025). Autocratization episodes which occurred in its entirety before 1995 are not included. This is because 1995 is the oldest year for which data exists regarding the CO₂ intensity trend variable.

limitations

There are limitations to this study. Several important ones are explained below.

The first limitation is the fact that each country’s case analysis is relatively small due to time constraints. With more information, more detailed analyses could have been made. The current analyses are summaries of findings and do not go into detail on each individual aspect.

Another limitation is that it would be difficult to create a large analysis for some countries in the first place. There are countries for which there is only a limited number of sources regarding their autocratization episode(s) and/or their environmental performance. For these countries, care should be taken in reading the analyses, since those analyses are based on a less diverse list of sources.

There are also limitations regarding the more quantitative analyses of countries’ environmental performance, for which EPI data was used. Here, in order to measure environmental performance, I used the EPI’s CO₂ performance variable. The issue here is that climate policies are more likely to affect emissions over the long-term than over the short-term (Andersson & Karpestam, 2013). This makes it more difficult to identify the environmental impact of policy changes made during a certain autocratization episode. It may also be why a country’s CO₂ performance during an autocratization episode does not always seem to align with the policies that were implemented during the episode.

literature

Andersson, F. N., & Karpestam, P. (2013). CO2 emissions and economic activity: Short- and long-run economic determinants of scale, energy intensity and carbon intensity. Energy Policy, 61, 1285–1294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.06.004

Block, S., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., de Sherbinin, A., Wendling, Z. A., et al. (2024). 2024 Environmental Performance Index. Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. epi.yale.edu

Van Lit, J., Van Ham, C. (2025). The would-be autocrats’ toolkit: what do incumbents do when they undermine democracy? European Political Science Review, 138-157. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773925100106