Ecological Performance: Ethnic Fragmentation versus Governance Quality and Sustainable Development

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the ethical and ecological aspect of the framework conditions for the welfare state formation. The hypothesis of the negative influence of high ethnic fractionalization on the ecological situation in a country that in the classical welfare states is offset by the high efficiency of government through the initiation of the function of balancing the interests of ethnic groups in the transmission buffer mechanism is tested in the paper. The study used correlation and regression analysis tools using the application statistical software package STATISTICA. The hypothesis of an inverse relationship between the degree of heterogeneous society and the ecological quality is empirically substantiated. It is proved that the quality of governance can weaken the inverse relationship between ethnic fractionalization and the ecological situation in the country. In the welfare states, the neutralization factor of ethnic fractionalization by the quality of governance institutions is traced, which testifies to the existence of an institutional transmission buffer mechanism in the relationship between the structure of society and the offer of environmental goods.