The Impact of Populism on Climate Policy in Highly Industrialized Democracies

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries II & Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics: Advanced Democracies

Abstract

In the second decade of the new millennium, highly industrialized democracies are confronted with several challenges such as international conflicts, finding a new balance of power, migration, etc. One particularly acute and severe challenge is the upcoming and increasing strength of right-wing populism. Parties putting right-wing populist slogans on their agenda are no longer a marginal phenomenon. In some highly industrialized democracies they are strong political forces and in others they even occupy government positions. The research question following from this is: To what extent do right-wing populist parties (RWPP) change the political agenda of highly industrialized democracies and what impact does that have on policies?
In order to analyze the impact of the rise of right-wing populism I will focus on strategies of mitigating climate change. Climate change is particularly relevant because in the context of environmental policy it is one policy field where highly industrialized democracies have a model role (Jahn 2016). In the past those states have been very active in increasing environmental standards hoping that their initiates spread to industrializing countries as well. In sharp contrast, RWPP are clearly against climate policy (Lockwood 2017). In a study of European RWPP one from 13 RWPP analyzed are skeptical towards climate change policy (Gemenis et al. 2012). Often the very fact of climate change is questioned and embedded into a conspiracy theory (Hobson and Niemeyer 2011; Gemenis et al. 2012; Brown 2014). Most prominent is the position of the right-wing populist President of the United States, Donald Trump, but also the German AfD denies that climate change is a real environmental threat.
More specifically, the impact of RWPP can take at least two avenues: first, it can be direct in that RWPP in government pursue their policy goals. That would mean that we see a different discourse and policy outcome in countries with a strong participation of right-wing parties in government. Examples for this would be the Hungarian government under Victor Orban, the Austrian government including FPÖ participation or the Finnish government under the True Finns.
The second avenue is more subtle but not less significant. Even when right-wing parties are not in government they have an impact on mainstream parties. This impact can be seen in the Netherlands with Wilder’s Party of Freedom, the Swedish Democrats, and recently the AfD in Germany. The analysis of the impact of RWPP via these two avenues is central to the interest of this research project.
In order to give an answer to the question I will focus on two aspects: (a) do strong RWPP (i) or right-populist parties in government (ii) make a difference in the law production concerning climate change and emission of greenhouse gases; (b) do strong RWPP (i) or right-populist parties in government (ii) change the style of the political discourse?
The paper will include the most advanced OECD countries and presents first results from an analysis of environmental policies dealing with the mitigation of climate change as well as applying an analysis of changes of the political discourse of parties relating to climate change.

References:
Brown, Mark B. 2014. “Climate Science, Populism and the Democracy of Rejection.” In Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes our Common Future, eds. Deserai A. Crow and Maxwell T. Boykoff. London: Routledge, 129–45.
Gemenis, Konstantinos, Alexia Katsanidou, and Sofia Vasilopoulou. 2012. “The Politics of Anti-Environmentalism: Positional Issue Framing by the European Radical Right.” Paper prepared forthe APSA Annual Meeting, Chicago.
Hobson, Kersty, and Simon Niemeyer. 2011. “What Sceptics Believe: The Effects of Information and Deliberation on Climate Change Scepticism.” Public Understanding of Science 22 (4): 396–412.
Jahn, Detlef. 2016. The Politics of Environmental Performance: Institutions and Preferences in Industrialized Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lockwood, Matthew. 2017. “Right Wing Populism and Climate Change: Exploring the Linkages.” Paper presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference, Glasgow.

Author

• Detlef Jahn, University of Greifswald