Voter Preferences, Party Politics and Environmental Policy Reform

Policymakers frequently implement environmental policies that are less ambitious than what voters would prefer. We document this gap using findings from previous research as well as evidence from climate policy in Austria's transport sector. To account for this pattern, we develop a model in which political parties compete with electoral platforms that involve multiple policy dimensions. When voters place greater weight on a primary issue -such as fiscal policy - than on environmental policy, we show that parties may refrain from proposing environmental reforms, even when these reforms enjoy broad public support. This dynamic arises once the primary issue becomes sufficiently salient to voters. We then examine potential ways to overcome this policy inertia, including the use of direct democratic instruments (e.g., referendums) and the delegation of environmental policy decisions from national to regional governments.