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Public opinion and special interests in American environmental politics

Author

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  • Elise Grieg

    (CER–ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Abstract

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 envi- ronmental regulation in general, they tend to consider it as of low importance. I discuss possible explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Elise Grieg, 2021. "Public opinion and special interests in American environmental politics," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 21/349, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:21-349
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    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-21-349.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public opinion; campaign finance; political economy; climate change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

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