The Role of the Political Economic Context in Policy Implementation: Evidence from the EU FLEGT Action Plan

Details

Supervisors

Aldashev, Gani

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how and to what extent the national political economic context of timber-producing countries influences the implementation and performance of the EU FLEGT Action Plan. The Action Plan intends to fight illegal logging and strength forest governance in countries that produce or process timber and export to the EU. This is analysis is done through an empirical study using trade discrepancies as a proxy for illegal logging in a sample of 16 timber-producing and processing countries. The results indicate that overall the EU FLEGT has indeed a positive impact in timber-producing countries, with countries at latter stages of implementation of the program showing lower levels of trade discrepancies. Nevertheless, the impact of the EU FLEGT cannot be interpreted alone without looking at the national governance indicators of each country. Factors such as corruption and economic openness prove to be determinant in the result of the EU FLEGT and that countries with lower levels of corruption tend to have also lower levels of trade discrepancies, even when compared to countries at latter stages of implementation of the program. This should be thus taken into account when establishing priorities for policy making and for better use of the EU FLEGT efforts when tackling illegal logging.