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AbstractThis research lays out the debates and contradictory findings regarding the impacts of corruption on forest loss in a cross‐national context, specifically in low‐ and middle‐income nations. After, I describe how these inconsistent findings may be due to difficulties in untangling the complexities of corruption definitionally and then operationalizing it in a cross‐national context. Then, I review the advances in corruption data collection and measurement. Finally, I discuss how these developments in data collection and operationalization have led to an expansion of research on corruption to other aspects of governance, bringing forward several avenues for future research, but also potentially conflating definitions of corruption with governance. Overall, I aim to capture how scholars are studying corruption and forest loss from a cross‐national context and what their findings tell us.

What can national governments do to improve their capacity for well-being? While increasing public medical care expenditures can facilitate increased well-being in developing nations, cross-national research often finds that public medical care expenditures have no effect on indicators of well-being, such as child mortality. This ineffective public spending could be due to a lack of governance; however, this relationship is understudied in the cross-national literature. Using 2-way fixed and generalized least squares random effects models for a sample of 74 low- and middle-income nations from 1996 to 2012, I examine how the interaction among 5 measures of national governance and public medical care expenditures impact child mortality. The findings reveal the importance of governance in determining the effectiveness of public medical care expenditures. Both public medical care expenditures and governance improvements are essential to reduce child mortality.

Conservationists and academics have long investigated the factors that impact forest loss in low‐ and middle‐income nations. Characteristics of the state, namely state spending, may impact forest loss in low‐ and middle‐income nations, although this relationship has been understudied and the limited research that exists has yielded contradictory results. I begin by reevaluating the relationship between state spending and forest loss using robust regression models for a sample of 97 low‐ and middle‐income nations. Initially, in line with extant literature, I find no support for the idea that state spending is related to forest loss. However, I respecify the models to consider if state spending interacts with governance factors including political stability, control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality. Governance is defined as the state's ability to formulate, implement, and manage the nation's funds, policies, and procedures effectively. I find that state spending reduces forest loss more in nations with higher levels of governance than at lower levels of governance.

While various researchers and practitioners agree that it will be hard to restructure our current global and local systems to adapt to and mitigate climate change, there is unsurprisingly great disagreement in how and if this can be accomplished and on what level(s), or if this is even what needs to be accomplished. These conversations have continued with the introduction of the "Anthropocene." The dominant interpretation of the concept poses several solutions, one being national government restructuring to support environmental efforts and encouraging behavioral change. To join conversations that critically evaluate the conceptualization and implications of the Anthropocene with the world-systems perspective, we consider how the effectiveness of national environmental governance in reducing CO2 emissions varies by a country's position in the global hierarchy. Using two-way fixed effects regression, this article tests how one aspect of this environmental governance, environmentally related taxes as a percentage of total tax revenue impacts CO2 emissions for 75 countries from 2000 to 2011. Given inequities in the global division of labor, which reinforce the dominance of higher-income countries and the exploitation of lower-income countries, we expect the effectiveness of environmental governance to vary tremendously by global position. Our results support the idea that the impact of environmental governance on CO2 emissions varies across countries at different income levels in the world-system, and this is due to external constraints. Such external influence is unsurprisingly neglected in dominant interpretations of the Anthropocene. In line with previous critical research, we argue that these external constraints undermine climate change solutions because they fail to address mutually reinforcing global, political, economic, and environmental inequalities.

Sustainable energy transitions are key to achieving climate justice for all. Carbon dioxide emissions'(CO2) unequal distribution globally is one of the many issues preventing climate justice. Efforts to reduceglobal CO2impacts are vital for environmental justice efforts and a future free from climate change is-sues. Researchers have long been interested in how the rise of global governance initiatives, such asmultilateral treaties, impact environmental outcomes across the world. However, little is known abouthow global governance concerning energy usage and technologies impacts CO2emissions across theworld. Using two-wayfixed effects regression analysis from 1996 to 2011, we test how 24 multilateralenvironmental treaties with an energy focus impact CO2emissions per capita, CO2emissions as a per-centage of gross domestic product, and total CO2emissions for 162 nations. The multilateral energytreaties were collected from Ecolex. This analysis assesses how the legitimacy of global contracts mayimpact actual decreases in CO2emissions, resulting in climate justice outcomes. Additionally, thisanalysis considers how factors of institutional state governance, including control of corruption, rule oflaw, political stability, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality moderate the impact of multi-lateral energy environmental treaties and CO2emissions. Wefind that stocks of environmental treatyratification are associated with decreases in all three types of CO2emissions. Renewable energy con-sumption, GDP per capita, and urban and total population are associated with increased CO2 emissions.We alsofind some support for the idea that treaties are associated with larger decreases in emissions innations with higher levels of state governance. Understanding how state accountability, transparency,and legitimacy factor into the effectiveness of multilateral environmental treaties on reducing CO2emissions is essential to combating climate change issues.

In this article, we link ideas from Evans concerning embedded autonomy to forest loss. In doing so, we hypothesize that higher levels of meritocratic hiring, firing, and promotion decisions in a government's bureaucracy should correspond to less forest loss in low- and middle-income nations. We test this hypothesis by analyzing data from 78 low- and middle-income nations with ordinary least squares regression and two-stage instrumental variable regression models. We find support for the hypothesis across a variety of model specifications, which include other factors that have been linked to forest loss. We conclude by discussing the theoretical, methodological, and policy implications of the study.

According to feminist political ecology, women are uniquely and disproportionately affected by forest loss in many low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) because of gender divisions with regard to labor, land access, and forest resources. However, most macro-comparative theories of development (including economic dependency, ecological modernization, treadmill of production, world society, and neo-Malthusian theories) tend to ignore gender. We draw on ideas from feminist political ecology to examine how gender-focused bilateral aid in the environmental sector impacts forest loss from 2001 to 2015. To do so, we analyze data for 79 LMICs using ordinary least squares regression. We find that more gender-focused bilateral aid in the environmental sector is related to less forest loss. We also find support for economic dependency theory (more agricultural and forestry exports are related to more forest loss) and neo-Malthusian theory (more population growth is related to more forest loss). The main finding on bilateral financing supports the idea that gender should receive more attention in cross-national research, especially the integration of gender-related measures into analyses to refine and expand conventional macro-theories of development.