To Emphasise or not to Emphasise? Green Parties' Performance and its Effect on Mainstream Parties' Environmental Agenda

Abstract

While most of scholars agree that parties compete by emphasising particular issues and responding to the issues owned and used by their opponents in different ways and based on various factors, there is no compromise on the relationship between niche parties' electoral success and the strategy applied by established parties, particularly in the case of Green parties and environmental issues. This thesis addresses the existing puzzle by examining to what extent and under which circumstances green parties' performance affects environmental issues' saliency on mainstream left-wing parties' agenda. The study is centred around conducting the quantitative analysis of panel data that is based on the Manifesto Project and the ParlGov datasets and includes elections in 23 European Union member states covering the time period of 1980-2018. The findings demonstrate that Green parties' performance measured by share of seats which these parties acquire during elections has a negative effect on established parties' emphasis on environmental issues in the elections which follow. Moreover, different effects for old and new member states are observed. Thus, the results of this research contribute to the previous literature on party competition and issue competition as well as existing debates on relationship between niche...