A Greening Europe? A Comparative Study of Environmental Activism, Public Opinion, and Party Competition in Europe

What influences social actors’ decisions to talk about and act for climate change? Political science research has focused on the drivers of environmental salience, yet the results are mixed. In this dissertation, I contribute to the discussion on environmental salience, and analyze four different aspects of environmental salience, through four independent research papers. I concentrate on Europe and study some determinants of environmental salience among the public and among political parties. The first paper studies the impact of countries’ global integration on individuals’ participation in environmental organizations. I argue that people’s political ideology conditions the positive effect of the global spread of environmental attitudes. Being on the right side of the ideological spectrum decreases the positive impact of global integration on environmental activism compared to being on the left side. The second paper analyzes the transnational influence of natural disasters on environmental attitudes. In one of the first comprehensive and systematic attempts, me and my co-authors explore whether there is a cross-border effect stemming from environmental disasters abroad on public opinion “at home”. The third paper studies the Conference of the Parties (COP) and its influence on environmental attitudes of the local communities that host it. Non-governmental organizations, media sources, and protestors gather around the location of COPs, disproportionately affecting individuals who live in proximity to the event compared to more distant residents. The last paper focuses on party competition on environmental issues. I disentangle parties’ responses to issue and non-issue owners and show that while mainstream parties de-emphasize environmental issues when green parties gain electoral support, they emphasize them when their mainstream competitors highlight them. However, I also show that this positive influence is conditional on the success of green parties. In systems with strong green parties, rival parties’ influence disappears.