Right-wing populist parties and environmental politics: insights from the Austrian Freedom Party’s support for the glyphosate ban

Abstract

Why has the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria supported a total glyphosate ban proposed by the Social Democratic Party? We examine this research question and pursue two goals: first, to explain the specific empirical puzzle; second, to develop a general argument on the environmental policy profile of right-wing populist parties. We contend that certain environmental issues and the way that policymaking handles them provide this party family with an opportunity for maximising its vote share. The parties might adopt-in specific contexts underlining their character as a right-wing populist party-strict stances on environmental issues. In the case of glyphosate, the Freedom Party could promise benefits to domestic groups, indicate the misconduct of (foreign) companies in the process of risk assessment and question the integrity of scientists. For these reasons, the party joined a coalition of parties demanding a glyphosate ban.

Nationalist ideology, rightwing populism, and public views about climate change in Europe

“…An increasingly prominent feature distinguishing Western European RWP parties from other parties is their emphasis on nationalist themes such as opposition to multiculturalism and internationalism (Eger and Valdez 2019, see also Golder 2016, Woertz 2017. It is therefore not surprising that RWP parties and politicians frequently support local and national environmental policies that protect the countryside, nature and the 'homeland' (Schaller and Carius 2019, Forchtner 2019b, Tosun and Debus 2020, but often express skepticism about global environmental problems like climate change and oppose policies to address them Kølvraa 2015, Forchtner 2019a). Those RWP parties and politicians who do acknowledge the reality of climate change tend to adopt a narrow 'climate nationalism' agenda which focuses on the limited measures their nations can adopt like improved public transportation, while rejecting supranational (global or European Union) policies (Ruser andMachin 2019, Schaller andCarius 2019).…”

The Three Faces of Populism in Power: Polity, Policies and Politics

“…In conclusion, although it is a fruitful and growing line of research, the literature on the consequences of populism on policies still suffers from some empirical, classificatory and methodological challenges: the overall number of cases of populist actors covering strictu sensu decision-making roles is still relatively low (although increasing, as for example after the 2020 Polish elections), controversies among scholars on which parties should be considered as populist remain significant (Biard et al 2019) and studies are mainly carried out at the national level, with a few exceptions at the local level (Bolin et al 2014; Drapalova and Wegrich 2020; van Ostaijen and Scholten 2014). Moreover, so far, some policies have been less studied: for example, the effects of populist politics on gender equality policies have not yet attracted large attention (Kantola and Lombardo 2020), and only recently studies have focused on environmental policies, with right-wing populist parties associated with more permissive positions (Huber et al 2021; Tosun and Debus 2020; Vihma et al 2020).…”

Populism and nature—the nature of populism: New perspectives on the relationship between populism, climate change, and nature protection

“…Another aspect that contributes a further facet to the diverse landscape of populists' environmental and climate-related discourses concerns the difference between the themes they focus on. While nature protection has an important historical heritage on the radical right, this often goes together with opposition to climate policies that are usually opposed because of their internationalist cross-boundary character or the threat they imply to traditional lifestyles (Schaller and Carius 2019;Tosun and Debus 2021;Vihma et al 2021). Relating this perspective back to classic readings in the study of populism, one can see that climate policies affect populists' "heartland" (Taggart 2000) in a more intrusive way than nature protection policies ever have.…”