Political polarization and environmental attitudes: a cross-national analysis

There is evidence that in the United States popular attitudes about environmental problems have been shaped by elite polarization on environmental issues. Yet there has been little systematic analysis of the impact of elite polarization on environmental attitudes in other parts of the world. Here I develop and test a general theory of the role of elite polarization in conditioning popular support for environmental protection. Evidence is drawn from multilevel analysis of World Values Survey data from 92 surveys carried out in 42 countries across the world, together with party polarization data derived from the Manifesto Project Database. The main finding is that elite polarization is associated with the amplification of mass-level left-right divides on environmental issues, consonant with the expectation that elite polarization should lead citizens to sort along ideological or partisan lines, but that this effect only holds in contexts where left-wing views are associated with support for environmental protection.