Does Environmental party representation matter for investments in green infrastructure? : a regression discontinuity approach

Abstract: For the 2014 election the Environmental Party, which is a small single issue party, revealed an election manifesto for the forthcoming electoral period, where they promised to establish more charging spots for electric vehicles and to make electric vehicles more accessible. The aim of the study is to examine to what extent investments in green infrastructure are affected by Environmental Party representation on a local level. A sharp regression discontinuity design is applied where the governing coalition in local councils’ changes discontinuously at 50% of the seat shares, to estimate the causal effect of Environmental Party representation on investments in green infrastructure. The results show that there is a positive causal effect of Environmental Party representation on investments in green infrastructure. However, one key assumption of the regression discontinuity design is probably violated, indicating that the governing coalitions are not as good as randomly assigned. Thus, the causal interpretation of the results must be treated cautiously. Moreover, in order to distinguish if it is Environmental Party representation that drives investments in green infrastructure on a local level, other factors such as bargaining power should be taken into account.