🎓 A new divide?

Parties play crucial role for addressing and fighting climate change. Yet, the determinants of parties’ positioning on the issue, as well as the broader consequences of the climate crisis on party systems have received only limited scholarly attention. This dissertation will explore the dynamics and effects of party competition on climate change. In three empirical projects, I will research how parties’ ideological profile conditions their response to climate change, whether and how climate change as a political issue can result in ideological repositioning, and, how intra-party actors position on climate change. For this purpose, I will develop a comparative data-set and computer-based coding method of parties’ positioning on climate change based on manifesto data, parliamentary speeches and more. The contribution of this dissertation goes beyond explaining party conflict on climate change, but adds to our knowledge on the processes by which parties react to and shape conflict on new political issues and trade-offs more generally. Furthermore, I contribute a comprehensive and replicable coding scheme for classifying climate change positions in a multi-language setting.