BESTRAFFA ELLER BELÖNA? En kvantitativ studie om miljöpolitik och väljarbeteende

Abstract

A possible explanation for the inability of the governments of the world to implement necessary environmental policies is that they are worried of being punished by voters for implementing too forceful policies. But do voters actually punish governments that implement more stringent environmental policies? Few studies have explored this question directly. Parts of the literature on environmental policy and public opinion indicate that voters would predominantly reward governments that implement more stringent environmental policies, while other parts indicate that voters would predominantly punish them. It is also possible that voters punish governments that implement more stringent environmental policies in some contexts, but reward them in others. One such example is that public support for environmental policies is lower in economically hard times. But earlier science has not investigated if lowered environmental policy support in economically hard times translates to voting behavior. This bachelor thesis investigates whether voters predominantly reward or punish governments that implement more stringent environmental policies, and whether this effect depends on if the policy is implemented in economically good or hard times. I attempt to answer these questions with a multivariate OLS-regression analysis with an interaction, covering a large number of OECD-countries and a timespan of thirty years. At first I find no correlation between environmental policy and vote share, but when I investigate the interaction effect of good or hard times I find a positive correlation between more stringent environmental policy and higher vote share in good times, and a negative correlation in hard times.