Strategically Environmental: How Economic Optimism Shifts Parties Away from Environmental Protection

Both parties and voters often perceive economic growth and environmental protection as mutually exclusive policy goals, creating a political trade-off between the two. As vote-maximizers, parties are expected to respond to shifts in voter preferences, yet it remains unclear whether this responsiveness operates across policy domains. This article introduces the concept of cross-domain responsiveness to examine whether parties adjust their environmental positions in response to changes in voter economic sentiment, and argues that party environmental positioning is guided by strategic incentives rather than postmaterial demand alone. Combining data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and the European Social Survey from 2010 to 2024 across 21 European countries, the analysis shows that parties respond to large positive shifts in median voter economic sentiment by prioritising economic growth over environmental protection. This effect is asymmetric and emerges only when changes in economic sentiment are substantial and positive. The findings are robust across model specifications and party systems. These results identify conditions under which parties de-emphasise environmental protection, contribute to recent research on strategic party positioning and issue competition, and highlight a key limitation of postmaterialist explanations of party environmentalism.