Climate Sceptics or Climate Nationalists? Understanding and Explaining Populist Radical Right Parties’ Positions towards Climate Change (1990

Abstract

Populist radical right parties are often considered to be the most extreme opponents of climate protection in Western Europe. Others predict a ‘climate nationalism’ among populist radical right parties combining nativism with a pro-climate agenda. Based on a new data set on party positions on climate change, including 485 party manifestos – 76 from populist radical right parties – from the 1990s to 2022 in 10 Western European countries, we find that populist radical right parties are divided but generally less likely to speak out for climate protection than other parties, which rather contradicts the climate nationalism argument. We find that populist radical right parties only became more aware of the issue since 2019 in the face of the mass mobilizations of Fridays for Future and, to a lesser extent, when it became a visible issue within the party system. Thus, we argue that populist radical right parties are forced to talk about the climate when the issue is emphasized by organized actors.

Keywords

populism radical right climate political parties Western Europe

Introduction

Existing research suggests that populist radical right parties (PRRP) take the most sceptical stance towards measures to fight climate change¹ compared to other parties. Their populist, nativist and authoritarian ideological backgrounds are expected to trigger anti-scientific and anti-elitist positions, a nostalgic vision of the past praising traditional lifestyles and a rejection of international commitments (Böhmelt, 2021; Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021; Huber, 2020; Lockwood, 2018). However, we are faced with opposing arguments in the literature that point out that the ideological orientation of PRRP does not necessarily result in a rejection of measures to fight global warming (Oswald et al., 2021; Ruser and Machin, 2019). According to some authors, protecting the environment of the culturally homogeneous nation-state is a general demand from PRRP and results from their nativist orientation. Ruser and Machin (2019:5) even identify a ‘climate nationalism’ and assume that ‘climate change denial may soon find itself in an embattled position’ among the European radical right.

Furthermore, academics suggest that PRRP’s issue emphasis and position on climate protection may change over time, depending on contextual factors. The success of green parties, the public salience of environmentalist issues and the visibility of environmentalist movements such as Fridays for Future (FFF) are expected to influence PRRP’s agendas in this respect (Berker and Pollex, 2021; Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021; Oswald et al., 2021), while general assumptions about PRRP’s programmatic profile question that they respond to external pressure (Adams et al., 2006; Fagerholm, 2016).

While scholars theoretically discuss the link between populist and nativist ideology and positions on climate change as well as the role that external factors play for PRRP’s climate agenda, we are still confronted with a lack of large-scale comparative and longitudinal research on this topic. Neither the Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (Rydgren, 2018) nor the Oxford Handbook of Populism (Kaltwasser et al., 2017) addresses environmental or climate issues. The Palgrave Handbook of Populism is an exception in this regard, as it devotes a chapter to the issue (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2022). A study by Huber et al. (2021) compares the environmental discourses and positions of populist parties in six countries but only focuses on two PRRP. A large-n report was conducted by Schaller and Carius (2019), who identified positions on climate protection among a variety of PRRP in Europe. However, the report is based on a qualitative analysis and therefore lacks a quantitative measurement of parties’ issue emphasis and positioning, a longitudinal dimension and a comparison with other party families. The study of Farstad (2018) explains the variation of climate change salience in party manifestos in a variety of Western democracies using quantitative methods, but it does not explicitly focus on PRRP and deals with a rather limited time period (2009–2012). Vihma et al. (2021) deal more explicitly with discourses of PRRP but focus exclusively on the particular Nordic context.

Based on literature on PRRP’s ideology, on the spatial theory of party competition and on theories of social power resources, this study tests several assumptions about the development of PRRP’s political agenda on global warming. Therefore, we analyse 485 election manifestos from PRRP (n = 76) and other parties (n = 409) from the 1990s to 2022 inclusive and observe trends regarding PRRP’s engagement with the issue. For this purpose, we quantitatively assess the issue emphasis (salience) and positions on climate change and run linear regression analyses to estimate the impact of green parties’ electoral success, the party system agenda and other contextual factors.

The findings contribute to the discussion about PRRP behaviour on climate protection and on the behaviour of niche parties in general. They indicate that climate issues have not been a particularly salient topic for PRRP but have become an important issue since 2019 after the FFF public mass protests. Factors usually associated with mainstream parties’ policy shifts on environmental issues, such as green parties’ electoral strength, do not seem to impact PRR niche parties. The general party system agenda plays a role in predicting how often PRRP talk about climate (salience), but its significance vanishes after controlling for some contextual factors. Thus, it mostly seems to be the 2019–2022 period that strongly influences the saliency of the climate issue while the positions of PRRP seem to depend on the particular strategic choices of each populist party. PRRP are, on average, the only party family that speaks out against climate protection, but we observe considerable heterogeneity within the party group.

PRRP and the Climate Issue

Ideology and Climate Protection

Despite the programmatic diversity of PRRP on some issues, these parties share a nativist, populist and authoritarian ideology (Mudde, 2007). Starting with ‘populism’, the ideational approach characterizes it as:

an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volontégénérale (general will) of the people (Mudde, 2004: 543).

While the ideological nature of populism is sometimes debated (Aslanidis, 2016), several scholars – and even critics of the ideational approach – agree that populist communicative elements construct an antagonism between a moral people and a corrupt elite (Aslanidis, 2016; Hawkins, 2009; Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Müller et al., 2017; Rooduijn, 2014). The ‘thicker’ nativist ideology ‘holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (“the nation”) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state’(Mudde, 2007:19). Non-natives are usually culturally or religiously different societal groups (e.g. Muslims) but also ideas and actors from outside the nation-state such as supranational organizations that threaten national sovereignty (Mudde, 2007; Pauwels, 2014). Finally, authoritarianism is defined by Mudde (2007:23) as ‘the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely. In this interpretation, authoritarianism includes law and order and “punitive conventional moralism”’. Among these ideological elements, scholars mostly emphasize populist and nativist ideological features to explain PRRP’s climate agenda (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021; Lockwood, 2018).

Before explaining the ideological links between PRRP and climate change, we must distinguish between general claims for environmental protection and demands for/against measures to prevent global warming. Many PRRP have not been hostile towards (domestic) green issues such as the protection of landscapes, rivers, flora, and fauna (Forchtner, 2019; François and Nonjon, 2021). PRRP ‘are often supportive of “green patriotism”’ (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021:156; see also Forchtner, 2019; Forchtner and Özvatan, 2019), influenced by the nativist notion that ‘each ethnic group must protect its natural territory in order to survive and thrive’ (François and Nonjon, 2021). However, regarding the climate issue, PRRP are usually considered to be less willing to advocate for climate protection.

In general, understanding climate change and its consequences is a complex issue for citizens, and the solutions are not simple (Weber, 2016). Böhmelt (2021:103) emphasizes that the abstractness of the issue, whose consequences are not experienced immediately but in the future, ‘increases the social distance between ordinary citizens and environmental politics’. Climate change is a technical issue that requires a certain technocratic regime of scientists to evaluate measures to combat it (Böhmelt, 2021). Furthermore, discussions and negotiations of solutions take place in an international context between several states, which further distances the issue from the citizens of the nation-states. Some scholars argue that it is mostly well-educated and/or high-income citizens who care about environmental issues, while ‘ordinary citizens’ care less because of the post-materialist and transnational dimensions of the issue (Huber, 2020; Wetts, 2019). As Böhmelt (2021:103) puts it, ‘the general will is less concerned about or able to influence environmental decision-making’.

This is where PRRP’s ideology comes into play. Due to the complexity and technocratic nature of the issue, populist parties can easily portray global warming as an agenda of political elites influenced by unelected scientists and environmental groups, rather than the people’s will (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2022). As argued by Lockwood (2018:726), it is the combination of populism and nativism that allows populists to attack the political establishment and ‘to construct a world view in which “the people” are ruled by a corrupt and illegitimate liberal, cosmopolitan elite’.

Furthermore, since climate change is a global challenge and cannot be solved in national contexts, it requires international cooperation and commitments that may undermine state sovereignty (Böhmelt, 2021; Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021, 2022). Given that the nation-state and independence of decision-making are sacred for PRRP, fighting climate change with its transnational implications is something nativists should attempt to avoid. Likewise, nativist and authoritarian ideologies often imply a nostalgic vision of the past considering societal changes as threats to traditional lifestyles (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021). To some extent, this may include demands for protecting ‘traditional’ industries and jobs considering new CO₂-neutral ways of doing business as an attack on the traditional way of life.

Populist parties may reject environmental issues also for strategic reasons (Böhmelt, 2021). Populist actors need to portray themselves as opponents of the political establishment to maintain their anti-elitist image. In this sense, populist actors may be sceptical of man-made global warming simply because the rest of the parties are in favour of climate protection (at least on paper).

However, populist ideology does not necessarily result in climate change denial or scepticism; a brief look at non-right-wing populist parties like Podemos, Die Linke or the 5-Star Movement clearly shows that (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2022). Indeed, populism can also be linked to positions in favour of climate protection by portraying the people as victims of global corporations that pollute and deplete natural resources (e.g. Bosworth, 2020). In the context of PRRP, some scholars argue ‘that sweeping claims that the far right is characterised by a uniform disinterest or unreflective denial of climate change are dangerously inaccurate’ (Ruser and Machin, 2019). Mentioning examples of PRRP demanding measures to prevent climate change – although not through international cooperation – they observe that the far-right is engaged in the issue and may develop a ‘climate nationalism’. Oswald et al. (2021:187) deny ‘that there is an inherent link between right-wing ideology and climate-change scepticism’ arguing that nativists’ demand to ‘protect the homeland’ can result in measures to fight global warming (and not only environmental contamination). The French Front National/Rassemblement National (RN) and the Austrian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) are considered examples (Aronoff, 2019; Oswald et al., 2021; Ruser and Machin, 2019). According to Oswald et al. (2021), PRRP’s ideology is more flexible than assumed by many scholars, and positions on global warming depend much on political opportunities (see also Hoerber et al., 2021).

In sum, both populist and nativist ideological elements can theoretically be linked to different positions towards climate change, although most scholars argue that sceptical views on man-made global warming are more likely to be in line with PRRP’s ideology. Table 1 shows the different factors derived from the existing literature linked to PRRP’s positions towards climate protection. The anti-establishment orientation leads PRRP to take positions opposite to the mainstream. This may result in a sceptical view of man-made climate change, when other parties from the party system emphasize climate protection. Opposition to technocratic government – for example, the strong impact of experts in decision-making processes – should also result in a sceptical stance towards climate protection. The same might be true for the narrative that liberal and scientific elites, together with environmentalist groups and NGOs, are accumulating the power to betray the people. The closeness of populist and nativist ideas to conspiracy thinking (Fernández-García and Salgado, 2022) may further lead to the denial of climate change. It is ‘secret elites that are working behind the scenes’ that actually determine political actions (Rydgren, 2017:489). A conservative vision of the past regarding the way of life and the rejection of supranational and transnational commitments can further be linked to a critical stance towards measures. The only ideological factor that could lead to a positive framing of climate protection is the nativist demand to protect the homeland from environmental threats.

Table 1.

Triggers for PRRP’s Positions on Climate Change.

Populism			Nativism				Free-market
↓	↓	↓	↓	↓	↓	↓	↓
Opposing mainstream positions	Opposing technocracy	Liberal/scientific elites betray people Conspiracy theories		Conservative and nostalgic narratives	Contra transnational politics	Protecting the homeland	Rejection of state interventionism
↓	↓	↓		↓	↓	↓	↓
Sceptical (context-dependent)	Sceptical	Sceptical		Sceptical	Sceptical	Pro measures	Sceptical

Sceptical = Rejecting climate protection.

Last, most PRRP in Western Europe are right-wing, regarding not only cultural but also economic issues. Even if man-made climate change is not explicitly denied, they might highlight negative economic consequences and therefore reject concrete measures. Scholars suggest that right-wing parties tend to respond less positively to climate change than left-wing parties do, partly because the former are more averse to state interventionism and regulations that climate change policies often require (Farstad, 2018). Right-wing parties may argue, for example, that higher environmental standards lead to higher costs for enterprises and therefore cause an exodus of companies. In combination with a nativist or nationalist ideology, PRRP can further blame other nations for global warming and deny their own country’s responsibility, claiming that ‘our industries are already clean’ (Vihma et al., 2021).

To recapitulate, several ideological elements of PRRP suggest that they are generally sceptical of man-made global warming or respective measures to prevent it. In this regard, most scholars argue that PRRP are more likely to reject climate measures than other parties. This is explained by the core ideological elements of the PRRP, namely, populism and nativism, and general hostility towards state interventionism in the economy (Böhmelt, 2021; Farstad, 2018; Huber, 2020; Ladrech and Little, 2019; Lockwood, 2018). This leads to our first hypothesis:

H1. Parties belonging to the PRRP family are more sceptical about climate protection than parties belonging to other party families.

Context Matters: Party System Dynamics and Political Opportunities

As anticipated above, several contextual factors may impact PRRP’s agenda on climate change. In order to understand the triggers for PRRP’s positions on global warming, we need to dive deeper into the literature on party behaviour. In spatial theory, mainstream political parties are usually seen as vote-seekers, prone to changing their positions when they believe this may lead to better electoral performance (Adams, 2012; Downs, 1957; Meguid, 2005; Spoon et al., 2014). Whether PRR niche² parties are responsive to the broader electorate or rather to their own voter base is still debated (Fagerholm, 2016), but an increasing number of scholars assume that PRRP cannot avoid issues that are particularly salient, even though they prefer to talk about the issues they own, at least regarding climate and environmental issues (Ruser and Machin, 2019). Tosun et al. (2021) argue, for instance, that PRRP emphasize environmental issues when they become an important topic for citizens. Anecdotal evidence from Germany and Denmark supports this argument. The Berlin branch of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)’s youth wing (‘Junge Alternative’) once demanded that the party refrains ‘from making the hard-to-understand statement that humans do not influence the climate’ and to formulate measures to fight climate change, as the issue ‘concerns more people than we thought’ (Aronoff, 2019; NTV, 2019). In the 2019 Danish elections, the loss of votes for the Danish People’s Party was interpreted as a consequence of its lack of climate-related positions (Vihma et al., 2021). Three months after the elections, the party launched a climate document demanding that ‘Denmark must be a leading nation in the green transition’ (Vihma et al., 2021:226). Oswald et al. (2021) explicitly claim that the saliency of environmental issues in society influences PRRP’s stances towards climate change. Therefore, we assume that the more salient climate issues are in society, the more frequently PRRP talk about climate change and accept the need for climate protection:

H2. The more salient climate change is among the public, the more frequently PRRP talk about the issue (saliency) and accept the need to fight it (positioning).

Parties are not only influenced by developments on the demand side but also by the behaviour of other parties. Oswald et al. (2021) assume that the success of green parties affects not only the saliency of the climate issue among PRRP, but also their position. This fits well with the spatial approach of Meguid (2005), who argues that the success of niche parties leads mainstream parties to address the issue. However, unlike mainstream parties, PRRP may try to find a niche for their positions by rejecting the positions of green parties and the mainstream. For example, Oswald et al. (2021) explain the different positions of the AfD and the Rassemblement National (RN) by the success of the Greens in Germany and the overall agreement among mainstream parties to combat climate change. In this sense, the AfD found a way to articulate a unique position on the issue, not only distinguishing itself from the mainstream but also providing an alternative to voters with a sceptical view of climate-related measures. In France, green issues were not particularly salient among parties and a successful green party is lacking. Since a common understanding of the importance of the topic was missing among the mainstream, the RN opted for a more positive approach to climate protection. Similar anecdotal evidence was reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. The AfD in Germany first demanded strict measures to prevent the spread of the virus, but started to question pandemic-related measures and even denied the severity of the disease when the government finally decided to act (Fiedler, 2020; Schwörer and Fernández-García, 2022). While the AfD was the only German party rejecting face masks, the populist radical right Sweden Democrats solely advocated for wearing them, supporting the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation when the rest of the Swedish parties did not recommend it (SVT Nyheter, 2020). Hence, some positions of PRRP (except positions on core issues such as immigration) might depend on the positions and actions of the rest of the parties. We therefore assume that the electoral strength of green parties and the saliency of climate issues within the party system lead to a higher salience of climate-related issues among PRRP. However, the position taken on the issue will become more sceptical the higher green parties score in the polls, and the more other parties demand actions to fight global warming:

H3. The higher the electoral success of green parties, the more frequently PRRP talk about climate change (saliency), and the higher the resistance towards measures for climate protection (positioning).

H4. The more competing parties talk about climate change, the more frequently PRRP talk about climate change (saliency), and the higher the resistance towards measures for climate protection (positioning).

Theories of social power resources emphasize the impact of social movements, associations and other forms of political pressure groups on state action (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Olson, 1982; Rueschemeyer et al., 1992;). Social power relations may explain not only classical welfare state politics (Esping-Andersen, 1990) but also environmental politics. In the context of genetically modified organisms (GMO), the strength of anti GMO-movements is associated with anti-GMO policies among European policymakers (Kurzer and Cooper, 2007; Schwörer et al., 2022). For the purpose of this study, the mobilization potential of climate activists and environmental movements should be considered. While environmentalist movements already played a role in the 1970s and the 1980s in the face of the ‘silent revolution’ (Inglehart, 1977), recent protest movements have mobilized explicitly and primarily on the climate issue. According to Sloam et al. (2022), we are witnessing a new wave of youth activism that vigorously condemns governmental greenwashing and calls for substantial changes in climate policies. Although different movements can be identified within this wave (e.g. Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation), they often act in a national context. FFF, on the contrary, is outstanding in terms of its global mobilization capacity, for example, by bringing more than 2000 student strikes in more than 125 countries on the streets in March 2019.³ FFF, which mobilizes explicitly on the climate issue, is considered a movement with large media coverage and impact on politics in Western Europe (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021; Marquardt, 2020) because of its open and non-activist character that distinguishes it from previous protest groups (De Moor et al., 2021; Igini, 2022). Regarding the potential impact this movement has had on PRRP discourses, Berker and Pollex (2021) argue, for example, that the AfD reacted to the emergence of the movement by adopting an adversarial strategy rejecting the demands of the movement. Unlike broader public moods that might lead PRRP to take a positive position (Aronoff, 2019; Tosun et al., 2021), FFF is a progressive environmentalist political movement with a pro-scientific orientation (Marquardt, 2020). Accordingly, FFF should be considered a political enemy by PRRP, whose positions are rejected. Therefore, we assume an increase in the saliency of the climate issue due to the emergence of FFF, and an increased hostility towards measures against global warming:

H5. After the establishment of FFF, PRRP increasingly talk about climate change (saliency) and become more hostile towards measures for climate protection (positioning).

Last, in addition to the threats posed by the electoral success of political competitors and the signals of public opinion, the institutional and economic context in which issue competition takes place may also provide incentives for non-issue owners to engage in issues owned by other parties (Spoon et al., 2014). In particular, Spoon et al. (2014) suggest that the adoption of green issues by non-green parties is more likely in proportional electoral systems and favourable economic contexts, where voters are more receptive to non-economic (post-materialist) issues. We control for these two contextual factors in our analysis.

Research Design

We focus on PRRP in Western Europe since the academic debate about their positions usually concerns that regional context. We select countries where PRRP (classified by the ‘PopuList’ (Rooduijn et al., 2019)) have been part of the national party system for several decades: Austria, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Italy. With Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Sweden, we further include countries in which PRRP succeeded after 2010. Including PRRP from 10 countries allows us to answer the question of whether there is a unified PRRP agenda on climate protection. To know to what extent PRRP’s positions and issue emphasis differ from other parties, we further include other relevant political actors in our sample, such as centre-left, centre-right, socialist, Green and liberal parties, which are or have been represented in parliament with at least 4% of the votes during the period of analysis (see Online Appendix). We analyse parties’ positions from a longitudinal perspective starting in the 1990s to rely on an extensive sample and on periods with different public moods and social movement pressure. To assess the saliency of the climate issue and PRRP’s positions, we use parties’ official election manifestos as ‘the only authoritative collective statement’ of parties (Hansen, 2008:203; Robertson, 2004). Election manifestos are comparable and available across countries and over time and usually cover all relevant political issues. In sum, we analysed 485 election manifestos, including 76 from PRRP. The manifestos selected from the PRRP are illustrated in Table 2 (see the Online Appendix for the rest).

Table 2.

PRRP Manifestos Selected for the Analysis.

Country	Party	Years
Austria	FPÖ	1990; 1994; 1995; 1999; 2002; 2006; 2008; 2013; 2017; 2019
Austria	BZÖ	2008
Switzerland	SVP	1991; 1995; 1999; 2003; 2007; 2011; 2015; 2019
France	FN/RN	1993; 1997; 2002; 2007; 2012; 2017; 2022
France	Reconquête	2022
Germany	AfD	2017; 2022
Italy	AN	1994; 1996
	Lega	1994; 1996; 2008; 2013; 2018; 2022
	FdI	2018; 2022
Netherlands	Center Democrats	1994; 1998
	Fortuyn	2002; 2003
	PVV	2006; 2010; 2012; 2017; 2021
	FvD	2017; 2021
Norway	Progress Party	1993; 1997; 2001; 2005; 2009; 2013; 2017; 2021
Spain	Vox	2016; 2019(I); 2019(II)
Sweden	New Democracy	1991
Sweden	Sweden Democrats	2006; 2010; 2014; 2018; 2022
UK	UKIP	1997; 2001; 2005; 2010; 2015; 2017; 2019
UK	Brexit	2019

Manifestos have been collected via the MARPOR archive. If manifestos were not available (e.g. for recent elections), we manually searched the web. FPÖ: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs; BZÖ: Bündnis Zukunft Österreich; SVP: Schweizerische Volkspartei; PVV: Partij voor de Vrijheid; FvD: Forum voor Democratie; UKIP: UK Independence Party; AfD: Alternative für Deutschland; AN: Alleanza Nazionale; Fdl: Fratelli d’Italia

Since data on the climate positions of parties are still missing – MARPOR (Volkens et al., 2021) only collects information on environmental positions and systematic measures of climate positions are restricted to a few countries and mainstream parties (Carter et al., 2017)-we conduct quantitative content analyses combining computer-based and manual approaches (Schwörer et al., 2022; Schwörer and Fernández-García, 2021). First, keywords referring to climate change are collected in a dictionary in the languages of the countries under analysis (such as ‘climate’ and ‘warming’) (see Online Appendix) based on theoretical reflections and pre-tests. In a second step, we manually analyse all text passages which contain a relevant keyword in order to assess how parties talk about the issue – whether they ‘recognise the danger that climate change poses to the world’ and demand measures or whether they ‘cast doubt on the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change’ (Schaller and Carius, 2019:11f) or simply speak out against climate-related demands. In line with Carter et al. (2017), we select the ‘quasi-sentence’ – a single political statement – as the unit of measurement and the single manifestos as the units of analysis (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011). Our two dependent variables are the saliency of the climate issue in election manifestos (any reference to climate) and the positioning of PRRP (net-evaluation: positive minus negative reference towards climate protection). The total share of political statements for each election programme is available at the manifesto project website within the original data files.⁴

To test for inter-coder reliability, we calculated Cohen’s Kappa (Landis and Koch, 1977). We prepared a list of text segments from PRRP manifestos that talk about climate, including several quasi-sentences coded according to one of the two categories by the authors and a similar number of quasi-sentences that have not been coded. Another person coded these segments according to the codebook rules. As mentioned in Table 3, Cohen’s Kappa is substantially consistent for the pro-category and almost perfectly consistent for the contra-coding (Landis and Koch, 1977).

Table 3.

Operationalization of Pro- and Anti-Climate Change Agendas.

Category	Sub-category	Cohen’s κ
Pro climate protection	Considering it an important issue; mentioning negative consequences and the current state of the issue and measures to fight the negative consequences of the climate crisis; highlighting own responsibility; emphasizing the human impact on climate change; mentioning positive consequences of climate protection	0.707***(n = 20)
	Positive evaluation of measures to fight climate change; mentioning concrete measures or the need to act in general; mentioning goals (e.g. to become CO₂ neutral); criticizing the current state of measures/current situation regarding climate policies
	Criticizing enterprises; states; actors who contribute to CC
Contra climate protection / against measures	Rejecting specific measures to fight climate change (e.g. invest in renewable energies); emphasizing the restricted impact of own measures to stop CC	0.863***(n = 32)
	Mentioning negative consequences of pro-climate policies (e.g. financial burden)
	Denying human-made climate change or trivializing climate change

CC: climate change.

***

p < 0.001.

For the independent variables, we choose a variety of data. An important variable is the success of the green parties. We assume that PRRP talk more about the climate when green parties are on the rise during election campaigns. Previous studies have often relied on the past election result of green parties (Abou-Chadi, 2016; Spoon et al., 2014), but scholars also highlight that past electoral performances neglect electoral shifts since the last election (Adams, 2012; Fagerholm, 2016). Consequently, others use the actual result from the election the manifesto was written for (‘current’ election) assuming that it is much closer to opinion poll estimation during the campaign (Schwörer et al., 2022). We agree with the second reasoning and conducted a brief analysis in this regard. For elections in Sweden (2014; 2018; 2022), Austria (2017; 2019), Germany (2017; 2021), Switzerland (2015; 2019), France (2012; 2017; 2022) and the Netherlands (2017; 2021), we calculated the difference between the past election result of green parties and their actual standing in the polls before the election.⁵ We did the same for the ‘current’ election results for green parties. As expected, past election results fail to predict green parties’ standing in the polls. Among 10 out of 14 cases, the ‘current’ election outcome was much closer to opinion poll data during the campaign (‘better’ than past election results by at least one percentage point). The average distance between past election results from the poll data is 3.7% (SD = 3.07). The gap between the ‘current’ election results and green parties’ standing in the poll is only 1.7% on average (SD = 1.17). Therefore, we opt for the ‘current’ election results for green parties.

To measure the salience of environmentalist issues⁶ among the public, we use Eurobarometer (EB) data since 2002.⁷ Respondents are asked to name the two most important issues their country is currently facing, providing a list of different items. We use the share of respondents, indicating that protecting the environment is one of the two most important issues. EB data are not available for Switzerland, and for Norway only since the last election in 2021. We selected the respective EB data that were collected (‘fieldwork’) at least 4 months before the respective election. While EB does not always explicitly ask about the public saliency of climate protection, attitudes towards environmental and climate protection seem to be strongly interlinked (Dijkstra and Goedhart, 2012; Price et al., 2014).

Regarding the impact of FFF, we can rely only on a time dummy, which restricts what we can say about causality. However, literature suggests that FFF has an unprecedented impact on politics because of its open and non-activist character (De Moor et al., 2021; Igini, 2022). One might argue that other events during the same time may have had some exceptional impact, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report or respective climate conferences. However, unlike FFF, IPCC reports are published regularly, and the most important climate conferences (e.g. Kyoto and Paris) have taken place in different periods (Institute for Cultural Relations Policy (ICRP), 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic is probably the only larger ‘event’ that affected all countries after 2019. A working paper by Mohommad and Pugacheva (2022) concludes that the pandemic may have increased concern about climate change among certain groups, but also finds that people who experienced job or income losses were less supportive of climate action. We therefore think that FFF as a climate movement has a more significant impact on PRRP’s agenda than the pandemic; however, as a restriction of this study, we cannot exclude that the latter had some additional impact.

Finally, to measure the proportionality of the electoral systems, we use the least squares index (LSq), as calculated by Gallagher and Mitchell (2008), which measures the disproportionality between vote and seat distributions.⁸ For economic growth, we use Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) percentage growth rates for the election year.⁹

Analysis

Starting with H1, it is assumed that PRRP are more sceptical towards measures to fight global warming than other party families. The boxplots in Figure 1 confirm this assumption. They show the net-evaluation (positioning) of respective measures from all manifestos from each party family during the period of analysis (1990–2022). Unsurprisingly, the most positive net-evaluation can be observed among the Greens, followed by the liberals, social democrats and the far-left, all of which have similar average scores. Christian democrats and conservatives score lower, but also speak out for climate measures (or at least admit that climate change is an issue). The radical right party family is the only group with a negative net-evaluation of climate measures (mean: –0.2, n = 76, SD = 1.2). Yet, the figure further shows several outliers in the PRR group.

Figure 1.

Net Evaluation of Measures/Necessity to Fight Climate Change.

Figure 2 shows how PRRP evaluate climate protection for the most recent period. It illustrates the percentage of statements speaking out for (positive values) and against (negative values) climate measures.

Figure 2.

Share of Pro- and Contra-Positions to Fight Climate Change.

The picture is divided and shows that PRRP in Italy, France and Sweden tend to support climate protection. That is also the case for the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ) in 2008 – a PRR splinter from the FPÖ – being the only PRRP before 2018 emphasizing measures against climate change (2.9% of quasi-sentences in the manifesto). PRRP in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), AfD, Forum voor Democratie (FvD), Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) and UK Independence Party (UKIP)) clearly speak out against measures. The heterogeneous picture in Figure 2 indicates that PRRP deal with the climate issue very differently. While some parties accommodate green positions in this regard, others deny the necessity to act, and still others ignore the issue (the Brexit Party; Vox). In summary, five PRRP tend to speak out against and other five in favour of climate protection (not considering the BZÖ). PRRP in Norway (Fremskrittspartiet (FrP)) and Austria (FPÖ) are less clear in their preferences. Interestingly, only one of the five ‘new’ PRRP (AfD; FvD, Vox; the Brexit Party; Reconquéte), namely, the French Reconquéte, speaks out for climate measures. While the AfD and the Dutch FvD clearly reject climate policies, Vox and the Brexit Party ignore the issue in their manifestos. It is worth noting that those parties rejecting climate protection talk frequently about the issue (AfD; FvD; PVV), while those demanding climate action do so rather rarely (we find a negative linear correlation between salience and positioning on climate change; the higher the visibility, the more negative the position; r = –0.622, p < 0.01).

Compared to conservative parties fromly after 2018.

Figure 3.

PRRP’s and Centre Right Parties’ Issue Emphasis on Climate Over Time (and Pro-Protection References Among PRRP): (a) Austria, (b) France, (c) Germany, (d) Italy, (e) Sweden, (f) UK, (g) Switzerland, (h) Norway, (i) Netherlands and (j) Spain.

Figure 4 shows the development of the saliency of the climate issue over time for all PRRP per period (mean per period).¹⁰ We see a moderate increase in the saliency of global warming between 1990 and 2010. In the following period 2011–2018, the issue slightly lost saliency before becoming a particularly important topic between 2019 and 2022 – the mobilization period of FFF.¹¹ In this regard, Figure 4 provides hints for confirming H5. The slight downwards trend between 2011 and 2018 could be interpreted as a consequence of the European economic crisis, which shifted the attention and party system agendas in many countries towards economic and social issues. As Spoon et al. (2014) suggest, post-materialist concerns such as climate change are less likely to dominate public debate during times of economic hardship. However, we find no statistically significant linear correlation between the percentage growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the election year and the saliency of climate change in PRRP’s election manifestos (the direction of the correlation is positive, as expected, but weak and not significant: r = 0.169, p > 0.05).

Figure 4.

Salience of the Climate Issue Among PRRP Over Time.

Figure 5 illustrates the shares of positive and negative references to climate protection during the same periods. In general, the pro- and contra-positions rise and fall together over time. However, in the 2019–2022 period, rejecting climate protection becomes more salient than demanding action. At least descriptively, we do not see a clear trend towards a new ‘climate nationalism’ (Ruser and Machin, 2019). Instead, the data suggest that the FFF movement not only triggered references towards the climate issue but also hostile positions towards climate protection (H5). Yet, this is particularly due to the hostility of German and Dutch PRRP, who dedicate a high share of their election manifestos to rejecting climate politics, while those parties speaking out in favour of climate protection do so less often.

Figure 5.

Pro- and Anti-Climate Policies Among PRRP Over Time.

But which factors influence PRRP’s behaviour on the climate issue? Public opinion seems to have an impact on PRRP’s issue emphasis and positions (H2). Figure 6(a) illustrates the share of respondents indicating that environmental issues are one of the two most important issues facing their country (EB data) and the saliency of the respective discourses in PRRP’s election manifestos, except for Switzerland and Norway (no EB data). PRRP tend to emphasize the climate issue more frequently when environmental issues are considered important among the public (r = 0.54). Figure 6(b) further suggests that instead of accommodating public opinion, PRRP adopt a negative standpoint on the issue (r = –0.36, p < 0.05).

Figure 6.

Public Salience of Environmental Issues and Climate Discourses Among PRRP: (a) Public Importance of Environmental Issues and Salience of Climate Discourses and (b) Public Importance of Environmental Issues and Net Evaluation of Climate Policies.

However, as shown in Figure 5, the substantial increases in PRRP’s issue emphasis and negative positions mostly occur after 2018, as we assume under the pressure from FFF. If we delete the cases after 2018 from our sample, we see that the link between public opinion and PRRP’s climate discourses disappears completely (salience: r = 0.09, p > 0.05; net-evaluation: r = 0.09, p > 0.05). Thus, the data suggest that the mobilization of public awareness through FFF protests may have had a greater effect. This interpretation makes even more sense if we consider that PRRP’s overall response to the evolution of public opinion is the opposite of what was expected: the correlation between public opinion and PRRP’s positioning on climate protection is negative, which contradicts any theoretical expectations about the response of political parties to public opinion.

The success of green parties (H3) does not seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for either saliency or positioning of climate discourses. We do not see a significant correlation between green parties’ success and the respective manifesto scores (salience: r = 0.14, p > 0.05; net-evaluation: r = –0.01, p > 0.05).¹² The saliency of the climate issue within the party system seems to make a difference instead (H4), as shown in Figure 7. We assumed that the more other parties talk about the issue, the more PRRP are forced to address it. For this purpose, we created a party system saliency index considering the frequency of references to climate change among the other parties in each party system. We weighted the salience of the climate issue across individual parties by electoral strength, meaning that parties with high vote shares have a higher impact on the party system agenda than those scoring low.¹³ Figure 7(a) shows a significant correlation (r = 0.43, p < 0.001) between the party systems index and the frequency with which PRRP talk about global warming, supporting H4. Yet, the net-evaluation as a positional indicator is not affected in a statistically significant way, although it points towards the expected (negative) direction.

Figure 7.

Party System Salience of the Climate Issue and Climate Discourses Among PRRP. (a) Party System Salience and Salience of Climate Discourses and (b) Party System Salience and Net Evaluation of Climate Policies.

Tables 4 and 5 illustrate different multiple regression models to assess the impact of the discussed variables on the saliency (Table 4) of the climate issue for PRRP, and on the positions they take on the issue (Table 5). Within each table, we run three models (a, b, c), including all PRRP cases from the sample.

Table 4.

Multiple Linear Regression Model (OLS) About the Triggers for PRRP’s Climate Agenda (Saliency).

	(a)	(b)	(c)
Green party success	0.008 (0.039)	0.015 (0.038)	0.007 (0.039)
Party system agenda	0.233*** (0.060)	0.142* (0.070)	0.125 (0.073)
2019–2022		0.935* (0.411)	0.978* (0.427)
Disproportionality			–0.023 (0.024)
% GDP growth			0.046 (0.086)
Constant	0.116 (0.251)	0.099 (0.244)	0.212 (0.373)
Observations	76	76	76
R² (adjusted)	0.165	0.210	0.204

Standard errors in brackets. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. ANOVA p-value < 0.001. Collinearity diagnosis (tolerance > 0.5; VIF < 2). Durbin-Watson = 1.997. OLS: ordinary least squares; PRRP: populist radical right parties; GDP: gross domestic product; ANOVA: analysis of variance; VIF: variance inflation factor.

Table 5.

Multiple Linear Regression Model (OLS) About the Triggers for PRRP’s Climate Agenda (Positioning).

	(a)	(b)	(c)
Green party success	0.010 (0.039)	0.006 (0.039)	0.009 (0.040)
Party system agenda	–0.072 (0.060)	–0.017 (0.072)	–0.007 (0.074)
2019–2022		–0.565 (0.422)	–0.525 (0.437)
Disproportionality			0.009 (0.024)
% GDP growth			–0.097 (0.088)
Constant	–0.089 (0.251)	–0.079 (0.250)	0.028 (0.382)
Observations	76	76	76
R² (adjusted)	–0.007	0.003	–0.003

Standard errors in brackets. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. ANOVA p-value > 0.05. Collinearity diagnosis (tolerance > 0.5; VIF < 2). Durbin-Watson = 1.639. OLS: ordinary least squares; PRRP: populist radical right parties; GDP: gross domestic product; ANOVA: analysis of variance; VIF: variance inflation factor.

Looking at Table 4, model a contains the green party success and party system (salience of the climate issue among the other parties) variables and shows that the latter has a significant effect on the saliency of climate change in PRRP manifestos. In model b, we introduce the time variable (dummy) that captures FFF protests. This variable appears significant and substantially improves the explanatory power of the regression model. The effect of the party system agenda remains significant (albeit slightly, p = 0.048) but loses statistical significance in model c when the contextual control variables are included. Although interacting with the dependent variable in the expected direction, the contextual variables (disproportionality of electoral systems and economic growth) are not only non-significant but also slightly reduce the variance explained in the dependent variable.

Table 5 shows the same model as Table 4, taking the net-evaluation (positioning) of climate protection as the dependent variable, instead of the salience score. None of the variables has any effect on the evaluation of climate protection in the models, although the negative values of the coefficients point towards the expected effect (negative positioning in response to increased party system attention and FFF). In sum, the importance (saliency) of climate change is influenced by contextual elements, while positioning seems to depend on more strategic decisions of PRRP.

We exclude the public opinion variable from the regression models for the following reasons. First, with no data for Switzerland and Norway, the sample size is almost half (47 observations), which weakens the reliability of the regression models. Second, and more importantly, it produces a multicollinearity problem with the party system agenda variable: the variance inflation factor (VIF) is above 3, thus exceeding the levels recommended by specialized literature (Hair et al., 2018). Considering that the public opinion variable behaves contrary to what the theory predicts (negative correlation with PRRP’s positioning on climate change) and that its effect is limited to the 2019–2022 period, we rely on the party system variable instead. The latter maintains a statistically significant correlation with the PRRP’s climate saliency, even when we remove the 2019–2022 period. The fact that the public’s environmental concern is highly correlated with the party system variable (r = 0.84**) and negatively correlated with PRRP’s positioning towards this issue suggests that the effect of public opinion may be partially mediated by the response of the party system: political competitors are receptive to public concerns (as suggested by Spoon et al., 2014) by incorporating the issue of climate change into their agendas, which, together with social mobilizations (FFF), may force PRRP to address the issue. The type of response, however, seems to depend on PRRP’s strategic considerations.

Discussion and Conclusion

This article contributed to the discussion on PRRP’s position towards climate change and the factors influencing their issue saliency and standpoints. While PRRP are often considered hesitant to support climate action because of their nativist and populist orientation, several scholars disagree. Conducting quantitative content analyses of 485 election manifestos – among them 76 from PRRP – we could show that Western European PRRP are indeed less willing to accept the necessity to fight climate change than are other party groups. PRRP are the only party family that on average explicitly rejects climate policies. However, within the PRRP family, we identified a heterogeneous picture, indicating that these actors are not united in their positions. We identified three different current strategies to address the issue.

First, PRRP in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom reject climate protection, but consider climate change as an important issue. Second, parties in Italy, France and Sweden address the issue and accept the necessity of acting against global warming, maintaining a low profile (low salience). Third, some parties refuse to address the issue in their recent manifesto (the Brexit Party; Vox; FPÖ until 2019). The Norwegian Progress Party is situated between the first and second pole. It sometimes supports climate protection but rejects various measures or international cooperation. It is particularly the first group of parties – those rejecting climate measures – that dedicate a high share of their election manifestos to the issue. According to our theoretical framework, this could be interpreted as an attempt to challenge the political establishment, which is increasingly concerned about climate change, by trying to appeal to a niche of voters opposed to the climate agenda. Other PRRP are more ambiguous or adopt climate protection demands, possibly as a way to connect with growing public concern and to avoid the political ostracism that climate denialism can bring. However, the fact that they do so very rarely indicates that they are not willing to allow climate protection to dominate their political agenda. It might therefore be easier for PRRP to link hostile positions on climate protection to their ideological and discursive framework.

Besides picturing the current state of positions towards climate change, this article focused on factors influencing PRRP’s standpoints and issue emphasis. Widely discussed factors such as the success of green parties do not have any impact on the position or frequency of addressing the climate issue, possibly due to the ideological distance between the party families and their very different electorates (Spoon et al., 2014). We observe that PRRP respond to the issue when it is particularly salient among the other parties in the party system, although this effect disappears if we control for some contextual variables. Public concern about the environment is correlated with the saliency of climate issues in PRRP manifestos, but its effect seems rather time-specific. Considering the strong correlation between public opinion and the party system variable and the negative effect it has on the positioning of PRRP, we argue that the effect of public opinion may at least be partially mediated by the party system agenda. Political competitors may incorporate the concerns of the public, increasing the visibility of climate issues in their discourses and thus forcing PRRP to address the issue. Yet, the fact that public opinion data are only available for a restricted number of cases clearly constitutes a limitation of this study. Future research could address this issue by conducting an in-depth analysis of the relationship between public opinion, party system agendas and PRRP’s issue emphasis and positions.

We further find a significant effect of the recent period of public mass mobilization by FFF on PRRP’s issue emphasis, even when we control for contextual variables. We observed a significant rise in climate issues in the manifestos since the emergence of the movement after 2018. While we cannot directly attribute the effect to movement pressure because we only checked for time periods, we still think it is reasonable to assume that FFF stands behind it. Other events within or shortly before the 2019–2022 period – such as the IPCC report or the UN climate summit – took place during other periods as well. Except for the Covid-19 pandemic, the effect of which we cannot measure, we do not see any exceptional events exclusively taking place after 2018. Accordingly, we argue that while climate issues are not a traditional ideological concern of PRRP, they are forced to address them in the face of public mass mobilizations. However, we do not see that they adopt the demands from the protest groups but are divided regarding the question of how to deal with the issue. Unlike sometimes predicted, we do not observe tendencies towards a new ‘climate nationalism’ (Ruser and Machin, 2019).

So do PRRP respond to external pressure? We should at least assume that, at a certain level of public visibility, PRRP are somewhat responsive to what is happening around them. Unlike mainstream parties, however, PRRP may find it easier to ignore some external developments (e.g. the success of green parties) and only respond if the issue can no longer be ignored.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217231176475 – Supplemental material for Climate Sceptics or Climate Nationalists? Understanding and Explaining Populist Radical Right Parties’ Positions towards Climate Change (1990–2022)

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217231176475 for Climate Sceptics or Climate Nationalists? Understanding and Explaining Populist Radical Right Parties’ Positions towards Climate Change (1990–2022) by Jakob Schwörer and Belén Fernández-García in Political Studies

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Approval Statement

The research is in line with the journals’ ethical standards.

ORCID iDs

Jakob Schwörer

Belén Fernández-García

Data Availability Statement

Data are available on request.

Supplemental Material

Additional Supplementary Information may be found with the online version of this article.

Contents

Table A1. Dictionary with Climate-Related Keywords.

Table A2. Selected Non-PRRP/Manifestos for Empirical Analysis.

Table A3. Presence of Green Parties in National Parliaments.

Table A4. Electoral Strength of Green Parties and Position of PRRP on Climate Protection.

Table A5. Opinion Poll Data for Estimation of Green Parties’ Success.

Table A6. Positions on Climate Protection of Conservatives and PRRP.

Table A7. EB Questionnaire.

Table A8. Eurobarometer Questionnaire about Most Important Issues.

Table A9. Saliency of the Climate Issue per Country (PRRP).

Table A10. Descriptive Statistics for Saliency of the Climate Issue and Positions on Climate Protection (CP).

Notes

Author Biographies

Jakob Schwörer is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-Rex) at Oslo University and guest researcher at the Department of Government at Uppsala University in 2021. He is visiting scholar at San Francisco University in Quito, Ecuador. His research focuses on parties, populist, nativist and religious communication of political actors in a comparative perspective.

Belén Fernández-García has PhD in Political Science from the University of Granada (Spain) and is currently postdoctoral researcher at the University of Málaga. She obtained a 5-year degree in Political Science and Public Administration with a National Award for Excellence in Academic Performance, and a Master degree in Social Problems, Direction and Management of Social Programs from the University of Granada. Her principal research interests lie in the area of political parties, populism and political communication.

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