Public opinion and special interests in American environmental politics

Arbeitspapier

To shed light on the political inertia around environmental legislation, I study the response of US senators to public opinion while controlling for special interest pressure. I combine data on public opinion (PO) on climate change - estimated by multilevel regression with poststratification - with campaign contributions from the extractive industries to indicate special interest (SI) influence, and use senator fixed effects, instrumental variables and the timing of senate elections for identification. PO has a strong impact on environmental legislation. The effects are different for the two parties: Republicans react to PO in election cycles, whereas Democrats are responsive through their whole term. The responsiveness of elected officials to environmental opinion is surprising: while Americans often favour environmental regulation in general, they tend to consider it as of low importance. I discuss possible explanations.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Economics Working Paper Series ; No. 21/349

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Grieg, Elise
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): ETH Zurich, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research
• (wo): Zurich
• (wann): 2021

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000478825
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/233085
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ