by Martin Adler, Stefanie Peer & Antonio Russo

Policymakers often adopt less ambitious environmental policies than the policies that voters support. We document this misalignment based on earlier studies and a stated voter preference experiment focused on Austria’s transport sector. To explain this observation, we propose a model where parties compromise on multiple policy dimensions.

Assuming environmental policy holds secondary importance to voters compared to other (e.g., fiscal) policies, we demonstrate that when the primary policy is sufficiently more salient to voters, no party proposes environmental reforms, even though most voters would support them. We explore possible solutions to this inertia, including direct democracy and the decentralization of environmental policy to local governments.

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