TESTING ELECTORAL EFFECTIVENESS OF ‘PROGRAMMATIC GREENING’ AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL PARTY-LED ADAPTATION STRATEGY FOR WESTERN LEFT-WING POLITICAL PARTY FAMILIES

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the electoral effectiveness of the left-wing political parties’ programmatic greening strategy to combat their shrinking electoral bases in the post-industrial era. More frankly, it explores the link between the frequency of left-wing political parties’ environmentalist programmatic signals and their vote shares. The supply-side or top-down approach established that individual voting preferences are being shaped by choice sets provided by political parties. Accordingly, it is suggested that as the ideology-burdened post-war political environment ended, the relevance of ideologies and class positions for voting preference weakened and the left-wing electoral bases shrank. In return, left-wing political parties adopted catchall strategies to increase their grip on the median voter. One of the alternative adaptation strategies in this regard was increasing environmentalist signals in their manifesto documents. To test whether this strategy was an electorally effective one, this study raises the following question: Did more frequent green programmatic signals help left-wing political parties achieve higher vote shares? Using quantitative methods of inquiry, this research analyzes Manifesto Project’s data for 1,939 manifesto documents, which were released between the years 1920 and 2018 in 56 democratic countries. Findings showed that those parties with more frequent environmental mentions in their manifesto documents were not, in general, voted at statistically significantly higher levels than those with less frequent environmental mentions. The result is valid not only for left-wing political parties but for all party families. Thus, this research concludes that increasing the tone of green programmatic signals is not an effective post-industrial adaptation strategy to follow in order to combat declining vote shares. Findings have important implications for current accounts of spatial theories of party competition, party conflict, electoral adaptation and realignment strategies of political parties, as well as issue salience, green politics, and the recently changing nature of the electoral effectiveness of party policy shifts.