Exploring Cross-National Heterogeneity in the Politicization of Climate Change

• In Event: Comparative Climate Impacts, Politics, and Policy

Abstract

Despite the relatively indiscriminate impacts of climate change throughout the globe, much variation exists between countries in terms of the domestic politics of climate change. There is significant heterogeneity in terms of how parties in different national contexts have chosen to address and frame climate change through their political platforms. For example, while climate change is clearly politicized across party lines in the U.S., this has not occurred as starkly in other countries, such as some member states of the European Union, where both populist and non-populist parties, left- and right-wing alike, broadly affirm the existence of anthropogenic global warming. In this paper, I explore how the structure of a country’s electoral system affects the extent to which parties compete on climate change and climate policy. I find that structural differences, such as voting systems and the degree of party competition, explain some of the heterogeneity across countries in terms of how likely parties are to diverge or converge upon both the recognition of climate change as a serious anthropogenic crisis and the need for concerted efforts to mitigate climate change through government-led policy efforts. My contribution includes a novel party-level dataset from 1958 onwards based on a systematic examination of party platforms, press releases, and various other forms of political messaging, which I used to identify parties that have explicitly included climate change and climate policy in their political platforms, the degree of explicit linkages drawn between climate change and climate policy and immigration and economic policy made by parties, and the climate policy stances taken by right-wing and left-wing populist parties.

My findings suggest that the character of electoral systems and the degree of party competition have significant implications for climate policy within countries. First, I find that climate becomes part of the political discourse more easily—and therefore, sooner—in countries with proportional as opposed to majoritarian systems. Second, I find that parties present the issue of climate change as a composite of many other policy issues, including economic and social issues, and that this bundling of climate and other political issues occurs more frequently or to a greater degree in majoritarian as opposed to proportional systems. Third, I find that in proportional systems where both right-wing and left-wing populist parties exist, there is a weaker relationship between populism and anti-climate sentiment.

Author

• Simran Singh