Political Headwind: How wind power development influences political trust

Abstract

Most policy projects aimed at environmental protection are conflictual in their nature and have supporters and opponents. If a policy is implemented without taking into consideration the opinions of policy opponents, there is a risk of disappointment with political actors, lowered political trust and even dissatisfaction with democracy among them. In our paper, we explore how environmental policy projects, namely, installment of wind turbines, disrupt political trust among policy opponents. We conducted semi-structured interviews with policy opponents who live in proximity of completed and planned wind turbines on Haramsøya and Bjerkreim in Norway. We found that the reason why opponents might lose political trust is, first and foremost, lack of procedural fairness, as they become unhappy with the secretive, abusive, and unfair process; disappointment with institutional performance in policy implementation process; people's attempts at participation in development processes failing or being ignored by authorities and decision makers; and increased polarization in the society through increased hostility and distrust towards opposing groups. All factors play a role in a decreased political trust among opponents of wind turbines at the planning stage and after the completion of the project, although polarization is less pronounced before the project is implemented. Our results shed light on the potential sources of political discontent among citizens living in proximity to wind turbines and need to be taken into account by policymakers in the planning stage of wind power development.