There is renewed interest in identifying the causes of deforestation because it contributes about 17 per cent of the annual emissions of greenhouse gasses. Despite considerable efforts, discovering universal causes of tropical deforestation remains an elusive exercise. This paper assesses the existing models of tropical deforestation and examines the problems involved in approaching the issue through the lens of governance reforms. Studies of deforestation have generally attempted to incorporate measures of wealth, population growth, urbanisation, and economic incentives. In addition, many studies have attempted to include governance in their make-up, developing indicators of good and bad governance to explain deforestation rates – these include measures of political stability and corruption. There have also been attempts to link various political regime-types to deforestation. The aim of this paper is to critically assess, compare and contrast existing models of tropical deforestation, as well as assess the suitability of some of the key policy recommendations. Various studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between types of political regimes and rates of deforestation, the underlying presumption being that the more democratic a regime the less likelihood that large scale deforestation will take place. There is a general perception that more open and democratic societies should have better environmental quality because of the public-good character of natural resources. Although improvements in democracy may have a significant impact on sustained episodes of economic growth, it would be imprudent to generalise that this is always the case and that positive changes in political regimes (democratisation) also lead to falling rates of deforestation. Studies that link political regime type to deforestation generally promote the inevitable rise of democratic structures, institutions and processes that work toward forest conservation and falling rates of deforestation. There is of course no guarantee that such conservation-minded institutions and processes will emerge in post-authoritarian regimes, or that they would quickly develop the maturity to deny their political elites the short-term attractions of deforestation. The connection between political regimes and deforestation is quite mixed and yields inconclusive results. This may partly be due to the fact that many studies have not provided a sufficient breakdown of regimes, or perhaps because there has been an insufficient analysis made of the quality of democracy and political stability within them.