Do Parties Matter for Environmental Policy Stringency? Exploring the Program-to-Policy Link for Environmental Issues in 28 Countries 1990–2015
| Published date | 01 May 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221132072 |
| Author | Sanna Lundquist |
| Date | 01 May 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221132072
Political Studies
2024, Vol. 72(2) 612 –633
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00323217221132072
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Do Parties Matter for
Environmental Policy
Stringency? Exploring the
Program-to-Policy Link for
Environmental Issues in 28
Countries 1990–2015
Sanna Lundquist
Abstract
Political parties are crucial in crafting effective national climate policies in democratic states. At the same
time, there is a practical and academic debate of whether political parties matter for policy output. This
article speaks to this debate by investigating the link between what parties say and what parties do with
respect to environmental issues. More concretely, it analyzes whether there is a connection between
the degree of environmentalism expressed in parties’ electoral manifestos and national environmental
policy output. Theoretically, the article draws on existing research on program-to-policy linkages in
general and for environmental issues specifically to argue that saliency of environmentalism in party
manifestos shapes more stringent environmental policies. This argument is empirically tested by
combining data on policy stringency with data on manifesto contents for 28 countries for the period
1990–2015. The findings corroborate the main hypothesis, which has implications for understanding the
overall potential for political parties to structure national environmental politics. The article concludes
by sketching broader implications for research on parties’ ability to shape national environmental policy
across political systems, and across partisan ideologies.
Keywords
political parties, environmentalism, environmental policy stringency, environmental policy,
environmental politics
Accepted: 22 September 2022
Introduction
The success of the Paris Agreement, adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties
(COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December
2015, depends heavily on national environmental policies. Stringent policies are needed
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Corresponding author:
Sanna Lundquist, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm 10691, Sweden.
Email: sanna.lundquist@statsvet.su.se
1132072PSX0010.1177/00323217221132072Political StudiesLundquist
research-article2022
Article
Lundquist 613
to achieve the commitment of limiting global warming to 2°C (Le Quéré et al., 2019).
Political parties have the potential to influence environmental policy outputs and out-
comes (Jensen and Spoon, 2011; Leinaweaver and Thomson, 2016). They are key actors
in pushing for more stringent environmental policies (Båtstrand, 2014; Carter et al., 2018;
Farstad, 2018). There is, however, considerable uncertainty regarding political parties’
potential to influence policy output, which is the topic of the long-standing “do parties
matter” debate in political science (Rose, 1984; Schmidt, 1996).
On one hand, parties are responsive to public opinion when formulating their policy
positions, and the expectation that parties (when they can) act in accordance with these
positions is a central aspect in the responsible party model (McDonald and Budge, 2005;
McDonald et al., 2004) and the mandate theory of democracy (Downs, 1957). Political
parties’ desire to maximize policy influence as well as, vote and re-election possibilities
provides strong incentives for parties to act in accordance with their outlined policy paths
(Strøm and Müller, 1999). On the other hand, studies have shown that parties’ responsive-
ness and room to maneuver vary with the degree of institutional friction, as parties deal
with vested interests of other parties, bureaucrats, and various interest groups (Thomson,
2017; Tsebelis, 2002).
Existing research has indicated that there is a relationship between what parties say
and what parties do (the so-called “program-to-policy linkage” (Thomson, 2001)). At the
European Union (EU) level, pro-environmental governments more frequently propose
environmental policies (Leinaweaver and Thomson, 2016) and make better progress
toward environmental targets (Jensen and Spoon, 2011). Environmentally concerned
governments tend to adopt a greater quantity of environmental policies (Knill et al.,
2010), are more likely to ratify international environmental agreements (Schulze, 2014),
and are more likely to impose higher environmental tax rates (Ward and Cao, 2012).
However, with the exception of Ward and Cao (2012), existing research has a tendency to
consider policy output in terms of the quantity of adopted environmental policies or the
adoption of specific environmental policies (Knill et al., 2010; Leinaweaver and Thomson,
2016; Schulze, 2014). As a result, partisan influence on the stringency of national envi-
ronmental policies remains understudied. This can be problematic as the quantity of
adopted policies says little about the content of these policies and thus the predominant
approach in the literature risks masking variation in policy stringency both across coun-
tries and over time.
To address this shortcoming in the existing literature, the aim of this article is to ana-
lyze whether there is a link between party environmentalism and environmental policy
stringency. To test whether the degree of environmentalism expressed in political parties’
electoral manifestos can be linked to the level of environmental policy stringency across
a diverse set of policy instruments, an unbalanced dataset consisting of 28 countries is
examined during the period 1990–2015. The analysis controls for various factors high-
lighted in existing research as possible explanatory factors of environmental policy out-
put. The articles’ main finding is that salient expressions of environmentalism in party
manifestos are connected to more stringent environmental policies, a finding which has
implications for our understanding of the overall potential of political parties to structure
national environmental policy.
The research design in this article is distinct from pervious quantitative analyses of
program-to-policy linkages on environmental issues in two main ways. First, the article
analyzes policy output in terms of environmental policy stringency which puts the con-
tents of policies, rather than the quantity of implemented policies, center stage. Second,
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