FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE OR MONDAYS FOR ECONOMY? CLIMATE ACTIVISM AND THE RESPONSE OF THE RADICAL RIGHT

Abstract

The emergence of the ‘Fridays For Future’ movement in 2018 marked a significant shift in global climate activism, drawing politicians’ attention to the urgent need for increasingly resolute measures towards climate change mitigation. While the majority of mainstream political parties are in agreement that climate policies are of importance, many Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRP) deny the need for action. This thesis seeks to better understand the impact that climate protests have on both the issue salience and positioning that PRRP adopt on climate change mitigation. This study tests this impact by using parliamentary speech data to form saliency and positioning variables, alongside protest participation data to measure the success of climate activism. The key findings from this study are twofold. Primarily, climate activism is associated with higher levels of climate-related parliamentary speech of the radical right. Secondly, climate activism has no impact on the positions of PRRP climate speech. These findings have several larger implications on the broader international political system, specifically indication that PRRP exhibit less climate skepticism in response to climate protests than scholars previously asserted.