Cheap talkers or hard hitters? Political parties’ climate policy proposals

Parties are central to climate politics, yet we have little knowledge of their climate policy preferences beyond salience or ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ positions. This study develops a new measure of parties’ climate policy preferences based on whether they advance policy proposals, and the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ quality of those proposals. It is argued that policy proposals are more ‘substantial’ than general climate-related content in political texts, and that ‘hard’ policies are more substantial than ‘soft’ policies as the former are less popular and therefore associated with higher political risks. The analysis of original data from 502 manifestos in 20 industrial democracies over four elections (2002–2022) finds that climate policy proposals – both pro- and anti-climate, and soft and hard – have become less prevalent. The study’s analysis of parties’ climate policy preferences shows that party ideology, size and incumbency help to explain variation in the prevalence of climate proposals.