2024/07/16 by Sofia Henriks, Niklas Harring, Nils Droste · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Climate Change Policy and Economics #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance #Policy Transfer and Learning
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09644016.2024.2373606
openalex publication_date 2024/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article investigates the impact of climate policies on electoral support for governing parties in Sweden through mixed methods combining a sentiment analysis of news articles and regression discontinuities of voter support over time. The regression discontinuity models indicate that the effects of climate policies on government support are not robust and are spurious across different model specifications. To ensure that we can detect effects, we used a set of political events that could have affected government support, such as elections and the Covid-pandemic as robustness checks. Contrary to expectations from literature and analyzed news reporting, we cannot determine robust effects of introducing climate policies on governmental support in Sweden. This suggests that governments do not need to anticipate losing substantial support when implementing climate policies – at least in favorable conditions.