CUE OR NO C(L)UE? How parties shape climate opinion formation using experimental insights from USA and Sweden

Abstract

As a central actor in shaping domestic climate policies, political parties play a vital role in building public support for policies aimed at mitigating climate change. However, previous research has neglected the role of political parties for individual climate opinion formation. This thesis studies the potential for political parties to lead public opinion into becoming more supportive of climate mitigation policies. I investigate whether party cues increase peoples’ willingness to take policy information that demonstrate the usefulness of climate policies into account in their opinion formation. I test the hypothesis that in-party cues in combination with policy information increase policy support with unique experimental data on two recent climate policy initiatives in USA and Sweden, two countries that have used considerably different approaches to climate change mitigation. The experimental results find no support for my hypotheses. While in-party cues together with policy information were not found to significantly increase policy support, results also indicated a lowering support when the policies were endorsed by out-parties. The implications of the results nuance long-standing evidence of elite influence on citizens’ policy opinions and question the ability of political parties to shape public climate policy preferences.