CUE OR NO C(L)UE? How parties shape climate opinion formation using experimental insights from USA and Sweden
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: As a central actor in shaping domestic climate policies, political parties play a vital role in\nbuilding public support for policies aimed at mitigating climate change. However, previous\nresearch has neglected the role of political parties for individual climate opinion formation. This\nthesis studies the potential for political parties to lead public opinion into becoming more\nsupportive of climate mitigation policies. I investigate whether party cues increase peoples’\nwillingness to take policy information that demonstrate the usefulness of climate policies into\naccount in their opinion formation. I test the hypothesis that in-party cues in combination with\npolicy information increase policy support with unique experimental data on two recent climate\npolicy initiatives in USA and Sweden, two countries that have used considerably different\napproaches to climate change mitigation. The experimental results find no support for my\nhypotheses. While in-party cues together with policy information were not found to\nsignificantly increase policy support, results also indicated a lowering support when the policies\nwere endorsed by out-parties. The implications of the results nuance long-standing evidence of\nelite influence on citizens’ policy opinions and question the ability of political parties to shape\npublic climate policy preferences.
Author: Felix Andersson
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2967991890