Political polarization on support for government spending on environmental protection in the USA, 1974–2012
Introduction
Many proponents and observers of environmentalism in the early 1970s characterized protecting environmental quality as a politically consensual issue (Dunlap and Gale, 1974). This was reaffirmed by the considerable bipartisan support among political elites for much of the nation’s landmark environmental legislation passed during the Republican Nixon administration (Layzer, 2012, pp. 33–41).1 Further, some early studies found little if any ideological or partisan differences in environmental concern among members of the US general public (e.g., Buttel and Flinn, 1974).
Yet, by the late 1970s and continuing to the present, political elites such as members of Congress diverged significantly in their support for environmental protection (e.g., Kamieniecki, 1995, Gershtenson et al., 2006). Also, numerous studies since the mid-1970s have found a significant divide in environmental concern between liberals/Democrats and conservatives/Republican within the US general public (see studies reviewed in Dunlap et al., 2001). Interestingly though, while there were fluctuations over this time period, the political divide on environmental issues in the American public by the beginning of the 1990s was comparable to that in the mid-1970s (Jones and Dunlap, 1992). This may partially reflect the continuing popularity of environmentalism during this period, as signified by the widely celebrated 20th Earth Day in 1990 (Dunlap and Mertig, 1992).
The early 1990s saw a noticeable shift in the American conservative movement’s position on environmental issues, even though it had been critical of environmental regulations since the 1970s (Dunlap et al., 2001, Layzer, 2012, McCright and Dunlap, 2011). After the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, the conservative movement replaced the “Red Scare” with a new “Green Scare” and became increasingly hostile toward environmental protection (Jacques et al., 2008). In response to the international environmental community successfully placing global environmental problems such as anthropogenic climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss on the international policy agenda (most notably via the 1992 Rio Earth Summit), and fearful of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s likely receptivity to that agenda, conservative foundations, think tanks, and leaders mobilized to challenge the legitimacy of these problems and thus undercut the need for government action to deal with them (Jacques et al., 2008).
This was most clearly manifested in the years immediately after the 1995 Republican takeover of Congress during which key Republicans challenged environmental science and policy (e.g., Brown, 1997)—especially on the problem of anthropogenic climate change (e.g., Demeritt, 2006, McCright and Dunlap, 2003). The subsequent George W. Bush administration continued these attacks on environmental science and policy by appointing conservative activists with strong anti-environmental orientations throughout the executive branch (e.g., McCright and Dunlap, 2010). Most recently, the conservative movement’s anti-environmental efforts, supplemented by increased lobbying from industry, have escalated in response to the Obama administration’s receptivity to environmental science and policy (e.g., Goodell, 2010). With the Tea Party pulling the Republican Party farther to the Right, congressional attacks on environmental regulations have become ever more common (Committee on Energy and Commerce Minority Staff, 2011).
Of all environmental issues, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has become the most conflictual, as it poses a serious challenge to fossil fuels-based economic growth by generating calls for sweeping regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Begley, 2007, McCright and Dunlap, 2010, Oreskes and Conway, 2010). Consequently, it is not surprising that Guber (2013)—analyzing data from Gallup polls in 1990, 2000, and 2010—finds increasing ideological and partisan divergence in the US public’s level of “worry” about global warming (and to a lesser degree, five other environmental problems) each decade, especially from 2000 to 2010. Similarly, McCright and Dunlap (2011) report statistically significant ideological and partisan polarization on several measures of AGW views among Americans with data from annual Gallup polls from 2001 to 2010. That is, the views about AGW expressed by liberals and Democrats on one side and conservatives and Republicans on the other increasingly diverged since 1990, most strikingly since 2000 (also see Hamilton, 2011).
Both Guber, 2013, McCright and Dunlap, 2011 claim that such political polarization—or increasing divergence over time—is consistent with party sorting theory (e.g., Fiorina and Abrams, 2008; Layman et al., 2006), whereby party activists and ideological leaders drive polarization among political elites and this process sends cues to voters that party positions are changing. As Baldassarri and Gelman (2008:408) explain, “since parties are more polarized, they are now better at sorting individuals along ideological lines.”
Since 1970, the League of Conservation Voters has tracked votes on bills related to key environmental issues (ranging from air and water quality to wildlife and forest conservation to climate change) and has calculated an environmental voting score for each member of the US Senate and House of Representatives. Briefly, a member’s score, which can range from 0 to 100, is the number of pro-environment votes cast divided by the total number of votes on key environmental issues. Fig. 1 reports the mean environmental voting score for Republicans and Democrats in the House and in the Senate for every year between 1970 and 2013.
Democrats’ environmental voting scores increased only slightly in the 1970s but then increased more sharply over the rest of the time period. Republicans’ environmental voting scores were relatively stable across the 1970s and 1980s before a noticeably dropping off in the early 1990s. The timing of this substantial decrease in Republicans’ scores coincides with the anti-environmental mobilization of the American conservative movement (Jacques et al., 2008, McCright and Dunlap, 2000).
Combining these separate patterns for Democrats and Republicans seems to reveal two distinct time periods. From 1970 to about 1990, the partisan divide in environmental voting scores increased only slightly—largely due to the slight increase in Democrats’ average scores. Combining each party’s scores for both the House and Senate, the annual average gap between Democrats and Republicans in Congress during these two decades is approximately 26 points. Yet, from 1991 to 2013, the partisan divide in environmental voting scores increased substantively. A 29-point gap in 1990 was followed by a 38-point gap in 1991—the largest difference up to that date. In the last few years of the time period, the gap has reached the high 70s.
It seems reasonable that this widening divide between Congressional Republicans and Democrats since the early 1990s has informed citizens of the evolving environmental positions of Republicans (and conservatives) and Democrats (and liberals)—a process consistent with party sorting theory. Not surprisingly then, recent work finds that political orientation has become one of the most powerful predictors of environmental concern in nationally representative samples of the US general public (Guber, 2013, Hamilton et al., 2010, Konisky, 2008, Konisky et al., 2008).
Indeed, comparing the growth of partisan differences on 15 issues, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2012) finds that the gap between Republicans and Democrats in the US public on environmental protection grew from 5 percentage points in 1992 to 39 percentage points in 2012, with Democrats being more supportive. This makes environmental protection the second most politically divided issue in 2012 (slightly behind social safety nets).2 Such provocative but descriptive evidence highlights the need for more in-depth analyses of political polarization on environmental issues.
Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) between 1974 and 2012, we offer the longest-term empirical examination of political differences in environmental concern with nationally representative samples of the American public. Over this time period, the GSS has included an item asking respondents whether we are spending too much, too little, or about the right amount of money on protecting the environment. Given the noticeable increase in anti-environmentalism within the American conservative movement and the sharp decline in environmental voting behavior of Congressional Republicans since the early 1990s, our hypothesis is that there will be greater ideological and partisan polarization on support for government spending on environmental protection within the US public from 1993 to 2012 than from 1974 to 1991. In the process of testing this hypothesis, we extend the broader polarization literature by adding to the small number of analyses of polarization in the environmental issue domain (see Baldassarri and Gelman, 2008, Guber, 2013, McCright and Dunlap, 2011).
Section snippets
The data set
We utilize the 1973–2012 General Social Survey (GSS) dataset (Smith et al., 2013). Each year of the GSS is based on a nationally representative sample. One of our two independent variables, political ideology, was not measured in 1973. In addition, due to the use of alternative forms of survey items measuring political ideology in 1983, we also drop the 1983 data. The key survey items utilized here are administered to the entire sample in some years and to randomly split parallel sub-samples in
Results and discussion
Fig. 2 displays the percentages of self-identified Democrats and Republicans who believe that we are spending “too little” on the environment between 1974 and 2012. Respondents identifying as “strong Democrat,” “not so strong Democrat,” and “independent near Democrat” are considered Democrats, and respondents identifying as “strong Republican,” “not so strong Republican,” and “independent near Republican” are considered Republicans. Fig. 3 displays the percentages of self-identified liberals
Conclusion
Since the early 1990s the US conservative movement has become increasingly hostile towards environmental protection (Jacques et al., 2008, McCright and Dunlap, 2000). Conservative foundations, think tanks, and elites have mobilized to challenge the legitimacy of environmental problems and thus undercut the necessity for government action to deal with them (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). This is especially the case with respect to anthropogenic climate change (e.g., Demeritt, 2006, McCright and
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Bob Brulle for sharing with us the League of Conservation Voters data.
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