An environmental education
How the education realignment polarized Congress on the environment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4329630 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joel B Kersting (0000-0002-5605-2024, Department of Political Science, Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 612-634 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-06 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0964-4016 • E-ISSN: 1743-8934 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09644016.2023.2251373 |
| OpenAlex | W4386373953 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 30 |
As the international community attempts to unite to combat climate change, American party politics could hardly be more divided on this issue. This paper offers an additional explanation for how US congressional politics on environmental policy has polarized: the ongoing education realignment in American party politics. As the Democratic Party increasingly relies on college-educated voters and the opposite is true for the Republican Party, this can affect the parties’ positions on environmental policy based on public opinion research which finds a positive relationship between education and pro-environment attitudes. Using League of Conservation Voters legislative scorecards from 1983 to 2020, this paper finds the education realignment contributed to the removal of pro-environment Republicans and anti-environment Democrats in Congress in recent decades; and this primarily occurred through elite replacement rather than conversion
Democracy · Elite · Excuse · League · Legislature · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics
Red Fighting Blue
Party Position Change in American Politics
Partisan Priorities
The Political Divide on Climate Change
Explaining science funding attitudes in the United States
Social Cleavages and Political Change
The Grassroots of a Green Revolution
Split
The Social Bases of Environmental Concern
Schooling the parties
Policy Domain‐Specific Ideology
More Than a Score
Assessing Sociodemographic Predictors of Climate Change Concern, 1994–2016
Open for Business
Detecting outliers
Ascendant Public Opinion
Trends
Environmental Policy and Party Divergence in Congress
Climate Change
Complex constituencies
A Cooling Climate for Change? Party Polarization and the Politics of Global Warming
Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity
Environmental Policy and Politics
Secular Partisan Realignment in the United States
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |