When Climate Concern Becomes Political: Stage-Specific Effects of Radical Right Party Cues

Radical right populist parties (RRPPs) are widely seen as key drivers of the politicization of climate change in contemporary Europe. By framing climate mitigation as economically harmful, nationally disadvantageous, or ideologically contested, these parties have contributed to increasingly polarized elite discourse. However, patterns of mass public opinion present a more nuanced picture. Comparative research shows that concern about climate change and general support for mitigation policies remain relatively high across partisan groups. Moreover, studies suggest that perceived opposition to climate policy often exceeds actual levels of resistance. This raises a central question: if mass-level polarization is limited, how do political divisions over climate policy emerge? This paper addresses this puzzle by shifting attention from attitudes to the processes through which they are translated into political behavior. It advances a stage-specific argument: the influence of RRPPs is not uniform across the opinion formation process. While climate perceptions and general concern are shaped by broad social, informational, and experiential factors and tend to be widely shared, partisan influence becomes more pronounced at later stages—particularly when individuals form policy preferences or make political choices in electorally relevant contexts. In these moments, party cues provide cognitive shortcuts that structure how individuals interpret policy trade-offs and align their choices with political identities. Empirically, the analysis combines panel and experimental data from the Swiss Environmental Panel (SEP) with referendum-level voting data from the Direct Democracy Study (DDS21). First, it assesses whether partisan identification predicts variation in climate perceptions and concern. Second, it examines the effect of partisan cues on policy preferences using experimental choice tasks. Third, it analyzes whether alignment with RRPPs is associated with divergence in referendum voting on climate-related initiatives. This multi-stage design enables a systematic comparison of partisan effects across different levels of political engagement within a consistent institutional setting. The findings are expected to show that while climate concern remains broadly shared across partisan groups, the translation of concern into policy support and voting behavior becomes increasingly structured by partisan cues—particularly those associated with the radical right. By identifying when and how politicization emerges, the paper contributes to debates on populism, issue politicization, and the micro-level mechanisms linking public opinion to environmental governance.