Friend or foe?—comparing party reactions to Fridays for Future in a party system polarised between AfD and Green Party

Abstract

Fridays for Future has risen as a new environmental movement pushing politicians to take action against climate change. However, its interaction with other political actors, most importantly political parties, has hardly been addressed systematically by scientific research. In this article, we take stock of party reactions to the movement on the national and subnational level in Germany. Furthermore, we investigate possible explanations for variances in these reactions in a comparison of subnational party organisations and thereby, focus on dynamics of party competition, especially on the impact of the Green Party as established contender and of the populist radical right AfD and its new role in environmental politics. We show that party reactions to the movement vary widely reflecting a clear divide on the left-right-spectrum. While centre-left parties, particularly the Green Party, support the movement, centre-right parties are utmost cautious and the populist radical right AfD stands out with a blatantly hostile attitude. Though indications for the impact of party competition dynamics were minor, we observed a strong polarisation on the climate issue that may take effect in the near future.