Populism - a threat to climate mitigation? : A quantitative study on populism and environmental policy outcome in EU nations

Abstract: This study aims to answer the question if populism has an effect on EU-member countries' climate protection efforts and progresses. The study uses CCPI data from the year 2019, EES attitudes from 2018, parliaments and governments in office leading up to the year 2018. The study uses populism theory from Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser (2017) and Lockwood (2018) and previous research from four studies to support the hypothesis that populism affects climate protection performance negatively. Populist attitudes are operationalized as an index, consisting of two variables (migration and economics, and trust in politicians), populism in parliaments as seat shares between 0-1 and populist governments as a dummy variable. Countries climate protection performance is operationalized using the CCPI index consisting of four categories, GHG Emissions, Renewable Energy, Energy Use and Climate Policy. The hypothesis is tested using OLS-regression analysis, using four different control variables. The study concludes how populism has a small negative effect on countries' climate protection performance, varying depending on the independent variable, but this effect is not isolated giving no basis for causality.