Search

Public demand for environmental policies can only influence policies when political parties incorporate environmentalism into their platforms. The economic downturn that began in 2009 may have caused European parties to abandon their commitment to environmentalism as they focused on solutions to the economic crisis. Particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where commitment to the environment is not as central to party competition, public environmental concerns may have been placed on the periphery of the policy agenda. Examining this issue, this study finds that political parties, especially mainstream parties, in Western Europe represented economic and environmental preferences of voters about equally as well in 2013 as they did prior to the economic crisis. However, in Central and Eastern Europe, parties tended to be less responsive to environmental preferences, presumably because economic differences dominate political divisions in newer democracies. It is concluded that environmental interests are well protected by mainstream actors in the West, though less so in Europe’s newer democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The causal processes that shape the emergence of environmental attitudes in post-Communist Europe are examined. We describe the widening gap in environmental policy orientations between West and East, and then cite two factors to explain the lower support for environmentalism in this region: first, citizens still evaluate environmental issues through a distinctive ideological lens carried over from the Communist era; and, second, they do not connect environmental issues to other (more salient) economic and political questions in a consistent way. Using the three waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) environmental module, these questions are explored with individual-level and multilevel models. It is concluded that the post-Communist effect is unlikely to disappear until environmental issues comprise a component of citizens’ ideological orientations and the programmes of political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]