Political Parties and Climate Change: Positions, Polarisation and Policy Relevance (PARTYCLIM)

Political parties lie at the heart of climate change politics, yet their strategies and influence are understudied, especially in a comparative perspective. The goal of the project is to address the lack of systematic and comparative data on parties’ climate change positions and provide the most comprehensive analysis of the role of political parties in climate politics to date. The research questions are: 1: How do parties position themselves on climate change, and what explains the variation? 2: What is the structure of party competition on climate change in industrialised countries, and what explains the variation? 3: What is the role of public opinion in explaining party positions and party competition on climate change? 4: How do political parties’ climate policy preferences shape government policy? 5: To what extent is variation in countries’ climate policy ambitions explained by party competition? The project will create a data set of parties' climate policy preferences, covering 20 countries across two decades of climate politics. The focus is on industrialised countries, as these are historically the largest emitters with the greatest responsibility to reduce emissions and because they have established (and therefore comparable) party systems. Statistical analyses will be combined with qualitative case study analysis of Australia, Norway, the UK and the US. These countries demonstrate puzzling variation both in terms of climate ambition and how polarised the parties are on the issue. Interviews with policymakers and policy-shapers and bespoke surveys will be conducted in each country. The empirical scope, mixed-methods approach and ambition of the project is novel and will deliver critical knowledge about climate politics at a vital moment in time. Findings will reveal how established party systems respond to new and challenging policy problems, and shed light on the possibilities and limits of political transformation towards a carbon-neutral world.

Political parties lie at the heart of climate change politics, yet their strategies and influence are woefully understudied, especially in a comparative perspective. The goal of this project is to address the lack of systematic and comparative data on political parties’ climate change positions and provide the most comprehensive analysis of the role of political parties in climate politics to date. The project research questions (RQs) are: RQ1: How do parties position themselves on climate change, and what explains the variation? RQ2: What is the structure of party competition on climate change in developed countries, and what explains the variation? RQ3: What is the role of public opinion in explaining party positions (RQ1) and party competition (RQ2) on climate change? RQ4: How do political parties’ climate policy preferences shape government policy? RQ5: To what extent is variation in countries’ climate change ambitions explained by party competition? To answer these questions, the project will bridge the comparative climate policy and party politics literatures. Using an innovative approach to hand-coding party manifestos, the project will create a data set of parties' climate policy preferences across 20 countries covering four election periods, encompassing over 300 parties-at-election. The focus will be on developed countries, as these are the largest emitters with the greatest responsibility to reduce emissions and because they have established (and therefore comparable) party systems. Large-N quantitative and medium-N methods will be combined with intensive case study analysis of Australia, Norway, the UK and the US. The empirical scope, mixed-methods approach and ambition of the project is novel and will deliver critical knowledge about climate politics at a vital moment in time.