2024/08/12 by Z. Dickson, Zachary P. Dickson, Sara B. Hobolt · 58 citations
Social Sciences · #Adversarial system #Argument (complex analysis) #Climate change #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Epistemology #Global warming #Law #Mainstream #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Radical right #Rhetoric #Scientific consensus #Skepticism #Social Media and Politics #Sociology #Wedge (geometry)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00104140241271297
published in Comparative Political Studies 58(8), 1733-1759 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2024/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Political parties often mobilise issues that can improve their electoral fortunes by splitting existing coalitions. We argue that by adopting a distinctively adversarial stance, radical right-wing parties have increasingly politicised climate change policies as a wedge issue. This strategy challenges the mainstream party consensus and seeks to mobilise voter concerns over green initiatives. Relying on state-of-the-art multilingual large language models, we empirically examine nearly half a million press releases from 76 political parties across nine European democracies to support this argument. Our findings demonstrate that the radical right’s oppositional climate policy rhetoric diverges significantly from the mainstream consensus. Survey data further reveal climate policy scepticism among voters across the political spectrum, highlighting the mobilising potential of climate policies as a wedge issue. This research advances our understanding of issue competition and the politicisation of climate change.