[Séminaire général du CEE] Green Strings Attached : The Electoral Consequences of Conditional Agricultural Subsidies” Diane Bolet (Université d’Essex) et Giorgio Malet (ETH Zurich)

How do workers in carbon-intensive industries respond electorally to the greening of their sector? While evidence suggests that workers and communities adversely affected by green policies are more likely to support anti-environmental, radical-right parties, less is known about these policies' impact on workers within specific sectors over time. We argue that “policy losers”—workers economically disadvantaged by such policies—are more likely to support radical right parties than other workers in the same industry. However, the profile of these “losers” varies based on the policy’s target population. We test this theory in agriculture, a high-emission but understudied sector, using the 2015 introduction of green conditionalities and the 2023 reform under the Common Agricultural Policy in France—the largest recipient of these subsidies. Observational and survey experimental data show that farmers and rural areas negatively impacted by subsidy reductions due to non-compliance with environmental standards were more likely to support radical-right parties across two policy cycles (2015–2022 and 2023 onward). The profile of affected farmers and areas shifted from being narrow and specific targets to more diffuse as the policy increased in stringency. The survey experiment and interviews show that economic factors, and to a lesser extent ideological factors, drive this political backlash. This mixed-methods study highlights a significant electoral cleavage within carbon-intensive industries and shows how this cleavage evolves over time due to shifting distributional impacts.

Speaker

Diane Bolet, University of Essex

Diane Bolet, University of Essex Diane Bolet is a comparativist, specialised in voting behaviour, public opinion, and far-right politics in Europe. Her research focuses on the role that changes in (local) context, media, and public policy (such as social and climate policies) can play in shaping political attitudes and behaviors, using observational and experimental data. She held positions at King’s College London, the University of Zurich, and the University of Durham before beginning her lectureship at the University of Essex in 2023. Her website is the following https://www.dianebolet.com/. 

Chair 

Joost de Moor, Sciences Po, CEE 

Discussant 

Théodore Tallent, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS