Partisan influence on climate policy do parties’ climate policy preferences influence climate policy?

Climate change and its consequences were never felt more than in recent years. Severe weather conditions are not only becoming more frequent but also more extreme. Political actors worldwide have recognised the dangers and problems related to climate change which has emerged as an issue on domestic policy agendas over the past 25 years. Climate change is a global, transboundary problem that requires national and international cooperation and agreements to tackle it. This might give political parties a decisive role in the fight against climate change if they can influence domestic and international policies and decide whether and how to combat climate change. This thesis asks: Do parties influence climate policy? And if so, under what conditions?

The thesis explores the influence of government and opposition parties on climate policy and conditions that might moderate partisan influence, such as the government type (coalition and majority status), diverging preferences within the government and the opposition as well as the preferences of a second legislative chamber. In the first part it applies quantitative analysis methods on large-N panel data in the EU between 2003 and 2020. The quantitative analyses find evidence that government and opposition parties influence climate policy stringency, whereas such link cannot be found for climate policy density. They also reveal moderating effects of the government majority status on the partisan influence of government and opposition, whereas no other moderating effects – neither on government nor opposition partisan influence – could be detected. The subsequent case studies on two German majority governments (Schröder II and Merkel I) in the second part of the thesis provide an example for partisan influence and illustrate the moderating effect of preference homogeneity within the government as well as the preferences of a second legislative chamber. The findings of this thesis help to improve the understanding of the role of political parties in climate policymaking and emphasise the importance of political parties in influencing national climate policies.