International Environmental Agreement and the Timing of Domestic Lobbying

We incorporate domestic lobbying activities into a policymaker's decision making on whether or not to sign a cooperative bilateral environmental agreement and, if not, how much pollution a country emits. There are environmental and industrial lobbyists who attempt to sway the policymaker's decision toward their respectively favored policies. As is usually the case with a common agency model, lobbyists present contribution schedules that are tied to resulting policy choices. In this article, we focus on the impacts of the timing of lobbying activities. The first type of lobbying occurs on the signing of a cooperative agreement, and the second when each nation chooses its own non-cooperative emission level after the agreement was not signed or one of the signatories has reneged on its promise. We compare the outcomes of the four different cases: (i) no lobbying activity; (ii) lobbying conducted at the agreement signing stage; (iii) lobbying conducted when non-cooperative choice is made; and (iv) lobbying at both occasions. Our results suggest that the different timings of domestic lobbying have quite contrasting impacts on the signing of a cooperative agreement, and also that increasing the number of lobbying opportunities can even contribute to the emergence of international cooperation.