Going against the grain: climate change as a wedge issue for the radical right

Dickson, Zachary ORCID: 0000-0002-9462-2980 and Hobolt, Sara ORCID: 0000-0002-9742-9502 (2024) Going against the grain: climate change as a wedge issue for the radical right. Comparative Political Studies. ISSN 0010-4140

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Abstract

Political parties often mobilise issues that can improve their electoral fortunes by splitting existing coalitions. We argue that by adopting a distinctively adversarial stance, radical right-wing parties have increasingly politicised climate change policies as a wedge issue. This strategy challenges the mainstream party consensus and seeks to mobilise voter concerns over green initiatives. Relying on state-of-the-art multilingual large language models, we empirically examine nearly half a million press releases from 76 political parties across nine European democracies to support this argument. Our findings demonstrate that the radical right’s oppositional climate policy rhetoric diverges significantly from the mainstream consensus. Survey data further reveal climate policy scepticism among voters across the political spectrum, highlighting the mobilising potential of climate policies as a wedge issue. This research advances our understanding of issue competition and the politicisation of climate change.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://journals.sagepub.com/home/CPS
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Methodology Government
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date Deposited:	25 Jul 2024 13:48
Last Modified:	20 Dec 2024 00:56
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124346

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