Party Competition and Climate Policy: Comparing Mainstream Parties' Manifestos in France, Germany, Ireland and the UK

Governments’ failure to produce policy responses commensurate with the challenge of climate change is at least partly due to policy positions adopted by political parties. This paper compares the climate policies of eight parties in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany since 2001 through the lens of office-seeking, vote-seeking and cohesion-seeking behaviour. It combines a quantitative analysis of party election manifestos using an innovative coding scheme for categorizing climate mitigation policies and a qualitative analysis using documentary and interview evidence. The paper identifies several factors that help explain variation in parties' climate policies including key constraints on policy development. The approach provides new insights into the party politics of climate change and the capacity of democratically elected governments to make effective climate policy.