| Sumario: | This study examines the regular pattern of involvement of 19 democratic states in relation to 15 international environmental treaties over the past 20 years. An attempt is made to understand what accounts for the international environmental engagement of democratic states through an empirical evaluation of four theories, specifically structural conditions, political institutions, idea-based, and international connectivity theory. Rather than case study analysis or an evaluation of a single country or theory, the value of the study is its comparative statistical evaluation of multiple indicators of four rival theories across 19 countries. Empirical findings reveal that the strongest causal forces underlying collaborative democratic state behavior are the citizenry's postmaterial orientations and executive-centered political institutions. International environmental commitments among democracies are constructed by the cultural composition of the polity and institutional rules that centralize ratification procedures, rather than by structural conditions and international forces. The study thus corroborates the idea-based theory's emphasis on the underlying values of the citizenry and the institutional theory's emphasis on domestic policy processes. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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