Environmentalism and (Green) Party Politics in Comparative Perspective

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Bringing together emerging and established scholars of political parties and environmental politics, this panel addresses the intersection between environmental activism and party politics in electoral democracies and autocracies across the globe through three diverse papers. In the first paper, Blings examines variations in the electoral success for 18 West European green parties in 14 different countries using a dataset spanning elections from 1973 to 2007. He finds that Greens are most successful where they have achieved both substantive (policy) and procedural (government participation) gains. A second paper by Henderson and colleagues employs two survey experiments to investigate the relationship between voter turnout and environmentalist identity among potential supporters of the Canadian Green Party. Finally, in a third paper, Plantan investigates the interaction between environmentalists and formal party politics in electoral authoritarian Russia. She finds that while political parties often have a clear incentive to work with environmental activists, activists themselves face a range of costs and benefits to engaging in party politics that could dampen the relationship.

While all papers address some aspect of the relationship between environmentalism and party politics, their differences provide the basis for an even richer discussion in conversation with one another. First, the papers on the panel employ a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including analysis of in-depth interviews, survey experiments, and time-series cross-sectional data. Second, their geographical areas of focus span from Canada to Western Europe to Russia. As such, this panel will appeal to scholars of political parties and environmental politics, as well as those interested in Canadian, Western European, and Russian politics, from a broad range of methodological approaches.

Sub Unit

• Division 39: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

Cosponsor

• Division 35: Political Organizations and Parties

Individual Presentations

• Green Parties as Programmatic Parties: Substantive Gains & Electoral Success - Steffen Blings, Utah State University

• Does Dissonant Voting Affect Identity?: Experiments on Environmentalism in Canada - Geoffrey Lancaster Henderson, University of California, Santa Barbara; Matto Mildenberger, University of California Santa Barbara; Leah Stokes, UCSB

• Environmental Activism and Party Politics in Electoral Authoritarian Russia - Elizabeth Plantan, Stetson University

• The Institutionalization of the European Green Party - Niko Switek, University of Washington; Kristina Weissenbach, University Duisburg-Essen

Chair

• Jennifer Hadden University of Maryland, College Park

Discussant

• Jae-Jae Spoon University of Pittsburgh