Far-right against green: the re-emergence of geographically defined voting patterns and the new environment cleavage in Western Europe

Abstract

This article argues that opposition to environmental protection is key to understanding the development of new voting patterns in Western Europe. We theorize climate change as a collective action problem with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs and develop a range of hypotheses about the ways in which concentrated resistance to climate change measures may be channelled into electoral behaviour. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey. Our results suggest that the backlash against environmental protection is triggered by the potential ‘losers’ of these processes, contributing to the emergence of a territorial cleavage between green voters residing in metropolitical areas, and far-right voters residing in rural and peripheral areas. Our argument explains the development of new political alliances and highlights the importance of green attitudes for the emergence of societal cleavages.