How green is my party? Programmatic stances towards environmental protection in Europe

Abstract

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.

Keywords

European political parties environmental protection cross-national analysis Global Party Survey

Introduction

How do political parties address the challenges of climate change? The intersection of environmental protection, climate change, and democratic governance poses multiple challenges worldwide (Pickering et al., 2022; Purdy, 2009). Despite a well-established scientific consensus on the need for action, political actors are often reluctant to implement far-reaching policies (Prakash and Bernauer, 2020). This reluctance highlights the complex dynamics between environmental issues and political ideologies, which are robust predictors of environmental attitudes at multiple levels.

Research examining the link between political cleavages and environmental policy has predominantly focused on the United States, where partisanship strongly predicts environmental attitudes (Birch, 2020; Dunlap et al., 2016; McCright and Xiao, 2014). Republicans tend to be more skeptical about climate change and environmental regulation than Democrats (Dunlap and McCright, 2008).

In the multiparty systems of European countries, political parties position themselves differently on environmental issues to attract electoral support and differentiate themselves from their competitors (Carter et al., 2017; Dalton, 2009; Rohrschneider and Miles, 2015; Schumacher et al., 2013). While left-wing ideological orientations are tied to pro-environmental sentiments, political ideology encompasses other dimensions beyond left-right positioning (Dunlap, 1975; Huber, 2020; Huber et al., 2021; Kitschelt and Rehm, 2018, 2023; Kulin et al., 2021; Lockwood, 2018; McCright et al., 2016). Green parties, for example, often prioritize environmental protection as a core component of their platform, advocating policies such as investment in renewable energy, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development (Carter, 2013; Clémençon, 2016, 2021; Maxwell and Miller, 2017). As a result, “green parties are clearly the owners of the green issue in Western Europe” (Spoon et al., 2014: 369; see also Meguid, 2005).

Party competition, however, is structured differently across countries and historical contexts (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Marks et al., 2006), and so party systems demonstrate distinct and different dominant cleavages (Bértoa, 2012; Kitschelt and Rehm, 2023; Rohrschneider and Whitefield, 2009). Post-communist democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) evolved under very different circumstances than their Southern, Western, and Northern counterparts. Populist parties emphasize anti-elitism, ethno-nationalism, and a rejection of liberal democratic norms, reframed through local historical grievances and sovereignty claims, and these parties consistently receive more support in CEE than in the rest of Europe (Grzymala-Busse 2019.) Country- and region-specific circumstances are thus essential in understanding these cleavages and the dynamics of party competition.

We extend the analysis of empirical studies focusing on the relationship between party characteristics and environmental protection. We examine the relationship between different party characteristics and their positions toward environmental protection in Europe. Using data from the 2019 Global Party Survey on 280 political parties in 38 European countries, we examine how parties’ positions on the economic left-right and social liberal-conservative dimensions, along with populism, influence their stance on environmental issues. The results show a significant relationship between economic ideology, social conservatism, and populism on the one hand and the parties’ positions on environmental protection on the other. Left-wing, liberal, non-populist parties tend to favor environmental protection more than their right-wing, conservative, and populist counterparts. We also find that the relationship varies across regions, with Central and Eastern Europe showing the most heterogeneous patterns.

Our study makes three contributions. First, most empirical studies have focused on the correlation between environmental protection and the values of citizens or party supporters. We examine political parties and their stances, which may differ from voter preferences. As Vegetti and Širinić (2019) point out, “people’s ideological self-identifications do not necessarily convey information about their party affiliations” (Vegetti and Širinić, 2019: 262). Second, we integrate Central and Eastern and Southern Europe into the analysis of predominantly Western and Northern European countries (Bale et al., 2010; Ford and Jennings, 2020; Golder, 2003; Green-Pedersen, 2007; Lefevere et al., 2019). Finally, we incorporate the role of populism -- conceived as a thin-centred ideology that opposes a “pure people” against a “corrupt elite” and characterized by a distinctive anti-establishment rhetoric – and examine how this orientation is associated with party stances on environmental protection (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021).

Theory and contributions

Europe shows considerable variation in the development of environmental politics and the support for environmental protection. In Western and Northern Europe, environmental politics emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, driven by post-materialist shifts within the electorate, new political socialization, and new evidence of environmental damage (Cotgrove and Duff, 1981; Inglehart, 2013). Green parties emerged in Western Europe “in the 1970s to call attention to the under-discussed issues of environment protection, nuclear disarmament, and nuclear power” (Meguid, 2005: 347-348.) As a result, environmental politics were initially characterized by the rise of Green parties, starting with Die Gruenen in Germany, supported by civil society organizations, and by integrating environmental concerns into the platforms of the mainstream governance parties.

Center-left and left-wing parties subsequently integrated environmental concerns into their broader agenda, emphasizing the importance of balancing economic growth with environmental sustainability (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021; Derndorfer et al., 2022; Wang and Keith, 2020)). Socially liberal parties – rooted in cosmopolitan, post-materialist values – now claim ownership of the issue of climate protection and make it a prominent cornerstone of their programmes (Hooghe et al., 2025; Müller and Proksch, 2024; Schwörer, 2024). In European “knowledge societies,” income and education can restructure electoral cleavages, pitting wealthy, educated urban elites against poorer and less educated voters (Kitschelt and Rehm, 2023; Rodden, 2019). These liberal urban voters are more likely to support environmental protection than their poorer and less educated counterparts.

Center-right and right-wing parties prioritize market-based solutions and technological innovation over regulatory approaches, calling for balancing environmental concerns with economic and financial interests and competitiveness (Lockwood, 2018; Neumayer, 2004; Żuk and Szulecki, 2020). Socially conservative parties view environmental protection skeptically, as an unnecessary innovation and threat to traditional (if mythologized) ways of life (Nawrotzki, 2012). They also frame ambitious environmental policies as an elitist, cosmopolitan threat to national sovereignty and traditional life, and therefore contest or minimize them (Buzogány and Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2021.)

We can distinguish further between economic and social left-right cleavages (Dalton, 2009; Enyedi and Deegan-Krause, 2011.) The economic left-right dimension centers on redistribution and the scope of market regulation. Parties located on the economic left are more willing to accept state intervention and collective costs in pursuit of ecological goals. The socio-cultural left-right dimension, in contrast, focuses on liberal-authoritarian values. Socially liberal parties tend to prioritize post-materialist concerns such as climate protection, whereas socially conservative parties give precedence to order, tradition, and growth (Lachat, 2018). Treating the economic and social aspects separately allows us to see whether support for environmental action in Western Europe is driven primarily by material-redistributive considerations, by cultural -value orientations, or by their joint effect.

We therefore hypothesize that (H1) in the developed party systems of Western Europe, economic and social left-right positioning should predict environmental protection stances, with economically and socially rightwing parties as more likely to oppose environmental protection.

In contrast, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a different set of political cleavages emerged after the collapse of communism in 1989, and these differences have persisted (Coman 2015.) Conservative social values and economic redistribution anchor one end of the spectrum, while liberal cosmopolitan stances combine with support for free market solutions anchored the other (Kitschelt 1992a; 1992b). Environmental protection organizations continue to be weaker (Börzel and Buzogány, 2010) There are few Green parties in CEE, and it is these parties that prioritize environmental issues in political discourse (Szulecka and Szulecki, 2019; Wang and Keith, 2020). In the 1990s, CEE party systems were also more fragmented and less ideologically cohesive due to rapid transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, and the subsequent economic and social transitions (cf., Casal Bértoa, 2012; Coman, 2015; Grotz and Weber, 2016; Lewis, 2006; Toole, 2000).

This decoupling of social and economic stances in Central and Eastern Europe means that environmental issues are often marginalized. Political parties did not emphasize environmental protection or even develop clear stances (Carter and Tumock, 2002). The one exception were skeptical right-wing populist parties, which criticized environmental protection movements as foreign, anti-Christian, a dictatorship, and leftist hysteria (Żuk, 2023). Insofar as there is a partisan divide, Birch (2020) finds that elite polarization is associated with popular left-right polarization on environmental issues, but only where the left-wing position is associated with environmental protection. In short, there are socially conservative critics of environmental protection, and greater salience if left-wing parties pick up the issue, but there is no clear pattern that maps ideology onto environmental protection.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is also generally lower support for environmental protection among CEE voters. First, these more conservative electorates are less likely to support environmental protection (Carter and Tumock, 2002; Heinisch et al., 2021; McCright et al., 2016). Voters were more conservative and civil society less organized, which meant that environmental protection could not easily find its supporters. Second, public opinion studies find a general trend between left-wing partisanship and high education, postmaterialist views, and support for environmental protection. The size of this effect is smaller in CEE (Chaisty and Whitefield, 2015; Fisher et al., 2022; Marquart-Pyatt, 2008; Poortinga et al., 2019). While a partisan divide exists in the Southern, Western, and Northern European countries among supporters and opponents of environmental protection, it is far more muted in CEE due to low salience and a different meaning of the left-right divide (Kenny and Langsæther, 2023; McCright et al., 2016; Rohrschneider and Miles, 2015).

These distinct cleavages, and their relationship to environmental protection, have their roots in both historical legacies and economic development. First, Kitschelt (1992a, 1992b) suggested that regional differences between CEE and both Western and Northern Europe were largely rooted in historical legacies of both pre-communist regime type and communist political economy. Post-communist countries would exhibit distinct political cleavages compared to the Western and Northern ones: combining conservative social values with redistribution on one end of the political spectrum, and liberal cosmopolitan stances with support for free market solutions. Green parties do not easily fit into these competitive dimensions.

Secondly, CEE countries depend more on fossil fuels and have fewer renewable energy sources in their energy mixes than their West and Northern European counterparts. Their economies, for example, are more reliant on coal, and the costs of the energy transition are high. This pattern of energy reliance also translates into environmental attitudes (Ostrowski, 2020; Wagner et al., 2016). Both parties and voters concluded that environmental protection could hamper growth and was thus seen as of secondary importance to economic development by voters across the political spectrum (Chaisty and Whitefield, 2015; Marquart-Pyatt, 2012). As a result, environmental concerns are often subordinate to economic development after the communist collapse in 1989. Nevertheless, Coman (2015, (2) points out the distinctiveness of CEE in this dimension (the social left-right as opposed to the economic left-right, which is characteristic for Western Europe), emphasizing “social cleavages within society, determined by nationality, religion, region, or locality that political elites could activate.”

Our expectation, therefore, is that overall support for environmental protection is lower among political parties in CEE. Given the idiosyncrasies of political party development in CEE, party stances on the left-right spectrum or redistributive issues should not correlate as strongly with stances on environmental protection as they do in the older democracies of Europe. We expect that (H2) parties in CEE should express lower support for environmental protection overall and that the correlation between (H2a) left-right positions and (H2b) conservative-liberal stances of political parties should be weaker in CEE than in the rest of Europe.

A final potential source of variation in environmental protection stances is populism. Across Europe, we see growing support for populist parties. These espouse criticism of establishment elites, and the need to better represent popular interests (Grzymala-Busse, 2019; Mudde, 2004; White, 2024). Right-wing populist parties are known to advocate for a combination of anti-immigrant and welfare-chauvinist stances. Populism attaches an anti-elite, people-versus-establishment narrative to parties’ positions on the economic left–right and social conservatism-liberalism divides (Forchtner, 2023; Hooghe and Marks, 2018; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Mudde, 2004). On the socio-economic and cultural right, radical-right populists translate distrust of technocratic expertise and fears about sovereignty into climate skepticism, transforming a traditionally low-salience green domain into a wedge that reinforces their ownership of cost-of-living and nationalist themes (Forchtner, 2025; Dickson and Hobolt, 2024; Danieli et al., 2022). Conversely, left-wing populists espousing economic left and social liberal stances endorse climate action only when it is reframed as distributive justice, potentially modifying the left’s usual pro-environment impulse (Chazel and Dain, 2024). Comparative manifesto and press-release studies demonstrate that populist parties use discourse on climate change as a means to contest it (Danieli et al., 2022). Consequently, populism steepens the anti-green slope for economic- and cultural-right parties while flattening the pro-green slope for economic-left ones, a pattern corroborated by cross-national analyses of climate-policy stringency after populists enter government (Lockwood and Lockwood, 2022).

Such right-wing populist parties are consistently more prevalent in CEE, partly because few other parties in the region offered their attractive combination of conservative social values and distributive claims. In effect, they have claimed the ownership of that end of the distinct political spectrum in CEE (see Pop-Eleches, 2007; Grzymala-Busse and Innes, 2003). Given this combination of stances, we would expect them to be opposed to environmental protection. What is less clear is the degree to which populism would be independently responsible for the flattened patterns of support for environmental protection in Central and Eastern Europe. In other regional patterns, Southern Europe is the one place in Europe where prominent left-wing populist parties have also arisen, as in Greece, Italy, and Spain (Cevera-Marzal, 2023; Luengo et al., 2016; Vittori, 2024). These parties also seek to represent the people against the elites, but they are not culturally conservative and thus are more likely to embrace environmental protection (Hutter et al., 2018). Given this ideological distribution of populism, we should observe that populism is negatively associated with environmental protection in CEE, Western, and Northern Europe, but not necessarily in the South.

Thus, (H3) populism in general should be associated with lower support for environmental protection, (H3a) right-wing populist parties should be especially likely to oppose environmental protection.

In examining how region and ideology interact to produce distinct stances on environmental protection, our contribution is threefold. First, while we know quite a bit about voter preferences, we seek to map the differences in political party positions between CEE and Southern, and CEE and Western as well as Northern Europe. Political parties are an important and underexplored mediator between voters and environmental protection stances. Nevertheless, there are few direct comparative studies of party positions on environmental issues between post-communist, South European, and West European parties, despite considerable literature on the differences between post-communist and other European political party systems (Grzymala-Busse, 2002; Kitschelt, 1995; Tavits, 2008).

Second, we examine how the specificities of post-communist party systems translate into distinct stances on environmental protection in CEE. The distinct political cleavages that we find in the region mean that stances on environmental protection display a greater skepticism about environmental protection, and party economic ideology has a smaller role to play.

Third, we examine the role of populist parties, as both powerful political actors in Europe and as representatives of popular discontent and mistrust of “mainstream” politics. They represent conservative social values and redistribution and exemplify the dominant party cleavage in CEE. More broadly, right-wing populist parties have been found to prioritize short-term economic interests over long-term environmental sustainability (e.g., Driesen, 2019; Ofstehage et al., 2022; Riedel, 2021).

Data and methods

Data for analysis

Our analysis uses data from the newest 2019 edition of the Global Party Survey (Norris, 2020). Conducted in 2019, this wave captures party positions at the very peak of climate awareness in Europe, exemplified by the continent-wide Fridays for Future protests, Green electoral gains, and the European Parliament’s declaration of a climate emergency. Recording stances under such intense public scrutiny provides a reference point for evaluating how parties respond when environmental issues dominate the agenda and for comparing any shifts in subsequent survey rounds. The project sampled 1,861 party and election experts and estimated fundamental ideological values, issue positions, and populist stances for 1,043 parties in 163 countries worldwide. The questionnaire was self-administered within each country by political experts through a project website and included 21 questions with 11-point ordinal response scales to assess each party’s position on various dimensions. We used the cumulative dataset with aggregated expert estimates for each party and narrowed the analysis to the European countries. Table SM1 in the online supplementary material (SM) provides a list of political parties and the number of experts involved in the project in each country covered by our analysis.

Figure 1 below presents the geographical coverage of countries included in our analysis. Even though the GPS-2019 covers many more European countries than we considered, we decided not to analyze data for Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia since these countries are not usually classified as European states. We also excluded Belarus and Russia, as the political systems in both countries are not democratic.

Figure 1.

European democratic countries covered by the Global Party Survey, 2019.

In analyses presented in this paper, we allocated all countries to one of three distinctive groups, i.e., Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Southern Europe, and Western/Northern Europe, following the European Union EuroVoc distinctions established by the Publications Office of the European Union (for details consult: https://op.europa.eu/s/x8gu). Our modifications to the original EuroVoc classification were as follows: Firstly, two regions, i.e., Western as well as Northern European countries, are combined into a category of Western and Northern Europe. Secondly, we classified Baltic states as Central and Eastern European, not Northern as in EuroVoc. The proposed modifications correspond to shared historical legacies with CEE, as well as Northern Europe, including the regime, economic, and societal development, as well as actual exposure to climate change and its consequences in particular countries.

Some researchers may question the proposed division of Europe into regions, since there is no universal agreement their boundaries, and the placement of individual countries may vary depending on the geographic, cultural, or historical criteria used. We performed a robustness check to investigate whether our main conclusions depend on the definition of European regions by testing other regional divisions. The results of the robustness analyses can be found in the SM, specifically in sections 2 and 3. Figure SM2 presents a visual representation of the differences between three distinct approaches to defining the concept of European regions. The robustness analysis demonstrates that the study’s primary findings remain consistent when alternative methods or definitions of European regions are employed and lead to the same conclusions. This consistency suggests that the observed patterns are not sensitive to specific coding choices. For further details and a description of the robustness checks, please consult Figures SM3, 4, 7, and 8, as well as Tables SM2 and 4-6 in the SM. We also encourage all readers to download our replication code and check whether other regional distinctions across Europe help better understand the impact of the ideological orientations of European political parties on their position on environmental protection.

Parties’ positions on the environmental issue

The dependent variable consisted of the GPS-2019 experts’ estimates for the party’s positions on the issue of environmental protection; the scale ranges from 0: “Strongly favors environmental protection,” to 10: “Strongly opposes environmental protection.” Within each country, the value of the dependent variable for a given political party (position of the party toward the environment) is the mean of the points assigned by the experts.

Parties’ positions on ideological values

Given the literature review, we selected three party-level characteristics to examine our hypothesis on how individual party positions on environmental protection correlate with broader party ideologies: (1) economic left-right distinctions measuring the party’s stance on economic issues such as privatization, taxes, regulation, government spending, and the welfare state; (2) social liberalism-conservatism, with liberal parties favoring expanded personal freedoms and conservatives favoring tradition and stability, believing that government should be a firm moral authority on social and cultural issues; (3) populist stances, measured with the item that positions parties from strongly pluralist to strongly populist rhetoric. Note that the average economic left-right scores across experts ranges from 0: “Extreme economic left” to 10: “Extreme economic right”; the social liberalism-conservatism score ranges from 0: “Very liberal” to 10: “Very conservative”; and the populist rhetoric score ranges from 0: “Strongly favors pluralist rhetoric” to 10: “Strongly favors populist rhetoric.” To distinguish between populist and pluralist parties, we dichotomised the populist rhetoric scale at 7.5, in line with GPS guidance. We classify parties that score above 7.5 as populist, and those that score below this threshold as pluralist. This decision is based on GPS validation tests which demonstrate that the 7.5–10 band (‘strongly populist’) shows a high level of correlation with the PopuList, Cas Mudde and CHES independent classifications of populist parties.

Analytical approach

To assess the relationship between three explanatory variables and the parties’ positions on environmental protection, we ran multilevel linear regressions with 280 political parties nested in 38 European countries. The models also incorporated the region of Europe (with Central and Eastern Europe set up as a reference category) to check whether the associations between parties’ economic and ideological values and stances on environmental protection differ across the European regions.

We build regression models step-by-step (for the formal specification of the regression models, consult section 3.3.1. in the SM). We started with the null model, excluding all covariates and assuming random intercepts between countries, allowing us to assess what part of the total variation in the dependent outcome is attributed to differences in countries and what to differences in political parties, respectively (see the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, hereafter: ICC). Model 1 incorporates all three explanatory variables: economic left-right, social liberalism-conservatism, and populism alongside the Region of Europe, with the restriction of the regression coefficient to be equal across countries. Models 2.1. and 2.2. add interaction terms between populism and economic left-right and social liberalism-conservatism, and allow slopes for a given explanatory variable to vary between countries. Models 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 add interaction terms between the explanatory variables and the Region of Europe (each model adds interaction with the European region and a particular variable, respectively) and allow slopes for a given explanatory variable to vary between countries. We weighted data by the vote share for a given political party in the last national elections in all seven models. The weighting approach follows other studies of political party positions to ensure that the analysis reflects the proportional influence of each party, recognizing that parties with greater electoral support have a greater impact on policy outcomes and public opinion (e.g., Abou-Chadi et al., 2020). We performed all analyses in the R Project for Statistical Computing (R Core Team, 2021).

Results

Party’s positions on environmental issues – descriptive results

Figure 2 presents the histograms and kernel’s densities (Chen, 2017) curves, visualizing the distribution of party positions on a scale ranging from 0 to 10, with distinctive colors for the three regions of Europe. Besides plotting distributions, we included boxes, making it easier to indicate the first quartile, the median, and the third quartile of the party’s positions within a given region. In addition, whisker plots show the range of the non-outlying party’s positions, i.e., deviating from the regional median up to 1.5 of the interquartile range.

Figure 2.

Parties’ positions on environmental issues by region of Europe.

The distribution of parties’ positions on the issue of environmental protection demonstrates that the political parties are strongly differentiated in all regions of Europe and cover the whole spectrum of the scale (consult Table SM2 in SM for detailed descriptive regional statistics). However, in Central and Eastern Europe, opposition toward environmental protection across all parties tends to be higher, with an average value equal to 5.96 on an 11-point scale and a median equal to 6.41) and with a broad range between the first quartile (Q1) at 3.88 and the third quartile (Q3) at 8.07 (i.e., parties’ competition with regards to environmental issues is higher compared to other regions). In turn, Southern Europe follows Central and Eastern Europe, with a slightly lower mean (5.78) and median (5.62) but with a similar spread between Q1 (3.82) and Q3 (7.91). Meanwhile, in Western and Northern Europe, parties exhibit the lowest opposition toward environmental protection: mean (4.46) and median (3.62), and the lowest competition with Q1 at 2.52 and Q3 at 6.47 (cf. Baranowski et al., 2025).

The distribution of the scores generally suggests that the political scene in countries from Western and Northern Europe favors environmental protection more often and is less divided compared to Southern and CEE countries (the result stays in line with our expectations in H2). Our results align with Carter (2013), who found that green parties in Western and Northern Europe significantly influence pro-environmental attitudes by enhancing issue salience and encouraging mainstream parties to adopt greener positions in response. These green parties establish themselves as primary advocates for environmental matters, pushing other parties to compete on ecological grounds and integrate these concerns into their platforms to varying degrees. Our findings are also consistent with other studies in this area, such as Rohrschneider and Miles’s (2015), and Facchini et al. (2017) confirmation of consistent pro-environmental parties’ stances across Western Europe. In CEE countries, on the other hand, the factors such as the conservative electorates and different economic needs mentioned earlier, result in lower salience and less support for environmental protection.

As the Global Party Survey lacked time-series information, we searched for additional data to enhance the credibility of the descriptive analysis presented above, and we employed the Manifesto Project, which provides comprehensive, longitudinal data on party platforms across multiple elections. A detailed account of this supplementary analysis can be found in section 5 of the SM.

The impact of European parties’ ideological stances on their positions toward environmental protection

Table 1 summarizes multilevel linear regression results with the models specified above. Data includes the estimates of beta parameters for regression terms and standard errors for subsequent coefficients in brackets, with asterisks indicating the level of statistical significance.

Table 1.

Multilevel regression results – estimates of beta parameters and standard errors in brackets.

Regression terms	Null	Model 1	Model 2.1	Model 2.2	Model 3.1	Model 3.2	Model 3.3
Intercept	4.78*** (0.15)	4.01*** (0.21)	3.97*** (0.22)	3.87*** (0.20)	4.04*** (0.20)	3.97*** (0.20)	3.93*** (0.24)
Economic left-right		0.28*** (0.04)	0.27* (0.06)	0.26*** (0.04)	0.05 (0.07)	0.25*** (0.04)	0.30*** (0.04)
Social liberalism-conservatism		0.32*** (0.04)	0.26*** (0.04)	0.28*** (0.06)	0.25*** (0.04)	0.24** (0.08)	0.29*** (0.04)
Populistic rhetoric		2.04*** (0.23)	2.07*** (0.22)	1.45*** (0.26)	2.02*** (0.22)	1.86*** (0.20)	1.97*** (0.39)
Southern Europe		0.09 (0.39)	0.11 (0.40)	0.22 (0.36)	−0.04 (0.39)	0.15 (0.36)	0.33 (0.47)
Western, and Northern Europe		0.13 (0.30)	0.14 (0.31)	0.39* (0.28)	0.00 (0.29)	0.25 (0.28)	0.10 (0.35)
Populistic rhetoric *Economic left-right			0.09 (0.09)
Populistic rhetoric *Social liberalism-conservatism				0.22** (0.09)
Economic left-right *Southern Europe					0.39** (0.13)
Economic left-right *Western, and Northern Europe					0.40*** (0.10)
Social liberalism-conservatism * Southern Europe						0.02 (0.15)
Social liberalism-conservatism * Western, and Northern Europe						0.20 (0.12)
Populistic rhetoric *Southern Europe							−0.85 (0.80)
Populistic rhetoric *Western, and Northern Europe							0.47 (0.57)
ICC countries	0.006	0.024	0.055	0.070	0.038	0.071	0.041
N countries	38	38	38	38	38	38	38
N parties	280	280	280	280	280	280	280
Marginal R-square	0.000	0.132	0.138	0.158	0.155	0.160	0.141
AIC	1354.799	1102.432	1094.353	1064.572	1085.500	1071.470	1090.214
Log-likelihood	−674.400	−543.216	−536.176	−521.286	−530.750	−523.735	−533.107

Notes: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

The null model results demonstrate that only less than 1% of the total variation in between-party positions on environmental protection can be attributed to countries, while the rest can be assigned to party characteristics. This result means it is more important to focus on party positions than on the national context to explain a particular party’s stance on environmental issues. Since there is only a small difference between countries, it is unnecessary to include any country-level contextual variables to explain differences between countries (see the recommendation by Heck et al. (2013)).

The estimates provided by Model 1 follow our expectations (H1). The more the party is on the economic right, and the more socially conservative it is, the more it opposes environmental protection. It should also be noted that when ideological positions are included as explanatory variables, the differences between the European regions shown in Figure 2 are negligible, even at a p-value of .05.

In keeping with our expectations, populism is closely associated with opposition to environmental protection across all the regression models (H3). This pattern holds in all regions of Europe, and there is no peculiar post-communist relationship as indicated by model 3.3, demonstrating that differences between populist and pluralist parties in their attitudes towards environmental protection are similar in all three regions of Europe. Contrary to our expectations, there is no significant moderating effect of populism (Model 2.1) for economic left-right positions.

However, the meaning of left-right positions varies between post-communist party systems in CEE and the established party systems of in West, North, and Southern Europe. We therefore removed all CEE countries, and reran Models 2.1 and 2.2. The results, which are reported in Table SM7 and visualized in Figure SM6 of the Supplementary Material (Section 3.3.3), reveal a modest but still negligible interaction between populist stance and the economic left-right axis. Among non-CEE parties, economic right-wing populist parties are slightly more likely to oppose environmental protection than their economic left-wing counterparts. The interaction between populism and the socio-cultural dimension remains robust across all specifications. As Model 2.2 and Figure 3 illustrate, socially conservative parties tend to oppose environmental protection, but this is especially pronounced in the case of populist parties. The strength of opposition exhibited by the populist party is directly proportional to its degree of cultural conservatism, a phenomenon that remains consistent both with and without the incorporation of CEE cases.

Figure 3.

Moderating effect of populism on the impact of party position on social conservatism-liberalism on the position on the environmental protection scale.

Model 3.1, which includes the interaction between economic left-right positions and the region of Europe, shows that the relationship between the party’s views on economic issues and its attitude to the environment is not uniform across the three regions, with countries from Central and Eastern Europe differing from those in the South, and West and North of the continent (in line with our expectations). On the other hand, the results of model 3.2, in which we added the interaction between social liberalism-conservatism and region, show no significant differences between European regions in the form of the relationship between positions on a liberalism-conservatism scale and the parties’ views on environmental protection (there is no support for H2b).

To visualize the significant moderating effect (revealed in Model 3.1) of the regions of Europe on the association between the economic left-right position of the party and its stance on environmental protection, we plotted the marginal effects of the interactions in Figure 4. Predicted relationships are shown for each region of Europe with distinctive colored lines and shaded areas corresponding to the 95% confidence intervals for the associations. The dotted line visualizes the pattern of association in countries from Central and Eastern Europe, while the solid lines visualize the pattern in the remaining two regions where the slopes were very similar.

Figure 4.

Moderating effect of the region of Europe on the impact of party position on economic left-right on the position on the environmental protection scale.

Thus, opposition towards environmental protection is associated with economically right-wing policies only in Western, Northern, and Southern Europe. A positive and significant association exists between the party’s positions on the economic left-right scale and their stance on environmental issues outside CEE (the two lines almost overlap). At the same time, in CEE, the direction changes, and the marginal effect remains negligible.

To summarize, all three characteristics of political parties included in the analysis, (1) economic left-right, (2) social liberalism-conservatism, and (3) populism, are significant in explaining the parties’ positions toward environmental protection. The associations for social liberalism-conservatism and populism are similar across the regions. However, in Central and Eastern Europe, the economic left-right position of the party do not correlate with environmental protection stances, unlike in rest of Europe. (Note that further analysis of the similarities between the various regions of Europe, and the correlation between the economic and ideological stances of political parties and their approach to environmental issues is in section 4 of the SM).

Discussion and conclusions

We find a significant relationship between political ideology and parties’ positions towards environmental protection. Our analysis, based on the 2019 edition of the GPS data, highlights the nuanced differences in party opposition toward environmental protection across different regions of Europe. Consistent with previous research, we find that parties positioned on the economic right and social conservatism tend to be more opposed to environmental protection (Farstad, 2018; Huber, 2020; Lockwood, 2018). This trend is particularly evident in Southern, Western, and Northern European countries, where economically right-wing and socially conservative parties display higher levels of opposition to environmental protection.

CEE countries exhibit a more heterogeneous pattern than the West, with economic ideology showing a weaker association with parties’ environmental positions. This result suggests that factors beyond traditional left-right economic divides play a more prominent role in shaping environmental attitudes in this region. Our findings suggest that CEE remains fundamentally different from the rest of Europe and requires in-depth national analyses to accurately understand and characterize the political landscape concerning critical environmental issues. To put it more bluntly, our study challenges the universality of the theory of political cleavages in Europe.

Furthermore, our analysis underscores the significance of populism in influencing environmental policy stances, with populist parties tending to exhibit more vigorous opposition to environmental protection measures across Europe. Not surprisingly, the participation of populist parties in governments, especially right-wing populist parties, is associated with increased national greenhouse gas emissions (Jahn, 2021). While the impact of populism on a party’s opposition to environmental protection remains consistent across all regions, socially conservative populists appear especially skeptical of environmental protection.

Since no extensive and well-established green parties exist in CEE, we do not observe much issue ownership. In Central and Eastern Europe, Green parties could only develop in the 1990s, and by the 2000s, the collapse of the center-left and the rise of populist parties across the region meant few sources of support for environmental protection. The result is that the landscape of party preferences on the environment differs substantially from other regions in Europe: there are few advocates of environmental protection. Numerous skeptics flourish, however, such as Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice, Slovakia’s SMER-Direction Social Democracy, the Czech SPD-Freedom and Direct Democracy, the Serbian SNS-Serbian Progressive Party or the Slovenian SDS-Slovenian Democratic Party.

The moderating effect of regional profiles on the relationship between economic left-right ideology and environmental stance highlights the importance of considering contextual factors in understanding party competition on environmental issues. While economic ideology and social conservatism remain significant predictors of party positions in many established Western, Northern, and Southern European democracies, political parties in post-communist states do not adhere to a uniform ideological pattern regarding environmental protection. Instead, their positions are shaped by a combination of historical legacies, economic dependencies, and evolving political cleavages (Witajewska-Baltvilka et al., 2024) that differ from those in older democracies. These variations further underscore the need for region-specific analyses to capture the diverse socio-political landscapes shaping environmental policy debates (Selin and VanDeveer, 2015), and a continued attention to the specificities of Central and Eastern Europe.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - How green is my party? Programmatic stances towards environmental protection in Europe

Supplemental Material for How green is my party? Programmatic stances towards environmental protection in Europe by Anna Grzymala-Busse, Piotr Jabkowski, Mariusz Baranowski in Party Politics

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

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

Funding

Mariusz Baranowski and Piotr Jabkowski disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Narodowe Centrum Nauki (2020/37/B/HS6/02998, 2023/51/B/HS6/00418).

ORCID iDs

Anna Grzymala-Busse

Piotr Jabkowski

Mariusz Baranowski

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biographies

Anna Grzymala-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

Piotr Jabkowski is an associate professor at the Faculty of Sociology Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, and a member of Sampling and Weighting Experts Panel in the European Social Survey for rounds 10 and 11. His research focuses on the methodology of cross-country comparative surveys, the total survey error paradigm and sampling theory.

Mariusz Baranowski, Ph.D., is an adjunct researcher at the Faculty of Sociology Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan. His research interest includes political and economic sociology, social welfare issues, and the critique of neoliberalism.

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