The environmental consequences of rising political populism and growing economic inequality

This paper examines how political populist support and income inequality are associated with the ecological footprint and its two sub-components: the carbon footprint and the non-carbon footprint (land and water use). Using a panel dataset covering 16 high-income European countries from 1990 to 2022, we estimate a dynamic panel error correction model. Three findings stand out. Right-wing populist support is positively associated with the carbon footprint, whereas left-wing populist support is negatively associated with the carbon footprint. For the non-carbon footprint, the results are weaker, with a tendency towards a positive association for right-wing populism and no or a weakly negative association for left-wing populism. Income inequality is positively associated with the carbon footprint but negatively associated with the non-carbon footprint. The results highlight the importance of integrating political dynamics, distributional conflict, and carbon inequality into environmental policy analysis.