Do Right-Wing Populist Messages Affect Public Support for Climate Policy?

• In Event: Mini-Conference on Politics in Post-industrial Societies II: Climate Scepticism and Changing Cleavages of Climate Politics

Abstract

Right-wing populist (RWP) parties are gaining popularity at the same time as the climate crisis is escalating. Scholars have studied RWP parties’ positions on climate change and RWP supporters’ opposition to climate policy. Yet, little is known about the effect of RWP rhetoric about climate change on individual opposition to climate policy. Individuals can reject climate policy if the latter puts a strain on individuals’ economic conditions via threat to employment with the closure of carbon intensive or increased living costs with carbon tax (e.g. the economic dimension) and/or if they see the climate agenda as being espoused by a liberal, cosmopolitan elite (e.g. the cultural dimension). This paper investigates these two dimensions using a survey experiment conducted in the United Kingdom (UK). We draw on framings actually used by real right-wing figures prominent in the UK debate, either blaming climate policy for the cost-of-living crisis or casting climate policy as the ideological project of progressive urbanites. This experiment would help us make causal inferences about what drives individuals to oppose climate policies, and how they express that opposition.

Authors

• Fergus Green, University College London

• Diane Bolet, University of Zurich