How green is my party? Programmatic stances towards environmental protection in Europe
2025-07-17
Why do parties adopt different stances on environmental protection? Drawing on theories of political cleavages and issue ownership, we aim to identify what shapes parties’ positions on environmental protection. Using data from the newest 2019 edition of the Global Party Survey on environmental and other positions among 280 political parties in 38 European countries, we ask how economic left-right positions, social liberalism-conservatism, and populism influence parties’ positions on environmental issues. Do these relationships vary across European regions? The results show a significant relationship between economic ideology, social conservatism, populism, and the parties’ positions on environmental protection. We find that the relationship varies across regions, with distinctive patterns in Central and Eastern Europe, where the economic left-right position of the party did not correlate with environmental protection stances. The study highlights the importance of considering regional specificities when understanding parties’ environmental agendas and contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive cross-national analysis of party competition on environmental issues.