محیط ، گرایش سیاسی طیف چپ و اقتصاد محیط زیست

The objectives of this commentary are twofold. The first is to examine the relationship between a party's position within the left–right political spectrum and its stance on environmental issues, as stated in party manifestos. The second is to examine the relationship between individuals' ideological orientation and pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes and self-reported behavior. Equality, distributional concerns and market skepticism are typically regarded as defining factors of left-wing political orientation. Our results suggest that left-wing parties and individuals are also more pro-environmental than their right-wing counterparts. Ecological economics similarly embraces sustainability, efficient resource allocation and equitable distribution and is skeptical towards the ability of unregulated markets to achieve these objectives. The hypothesis is put forward that ecological economics is more likely to be supported by left-wing parties and individuals

Existing evidence on the link between the position of parties within the political spectrum as well as self-identified ideology of individuals on the one hand and pro-environmental orientation on the other is confined to single country studies (e.g., Dietz et al., 1998 and Dunlap et al., 2001) or the study of a very limited number of countries (e.g., Somma and Tolleson-Rinehart, 1997 and Hayes, 2001). This short article demonstrates that political parties on the left of the political spectrum and individuals who identify themselves as left-wing are more likely to embrace pro-environmental positions than their right-wing counterparts. It thus confirms existing studies but provides more comprehensive evidence from a much larger sample of countries. Pro-environmental orientation thus complements distributional concerns and skepticism toward the beneficial effects of unregulated markets, which are traditionally regarded as separating the political left from the political right. This resembles the three pillars of ecological economics: sustainability, equity and efficiency (correction of market failures). The hypothesis is put forward that based on this evidence, one can expect that ecological economics is more likely to be supported by left-wing parties and individuals.

Distributional concerns and skepticism towards the beneficial effects of unregulated markets are traditionally regarded as important factors distinguishing left-wing political parties from right-wing parties, as indicated by many of the pro-left and pro-right categories listed in Table 3. It is plausible to assume that individuals who identify themselves as left-wing share these concerns and the skepticism towards unregulated markets. This short article has put forward evidence that such left-wing political orientation goes hand in hand with greater willingness of parties to embrace pro-environmental issues in election manifestos and more pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes and self-reported consumer and political behavior of individuals. It confirms earlier studies, but its evidence is based on a much larger cross-national sample than previous studies. As a caveat, the evidence put forward here is tentative rather than conclusive and needs to be qualified by the fact that the results on party orientation stem from a sample almost exclusively drawn from developed countries that the analysis on individual orientation draws upon a broader, but still not global sample, and that the power of the statistical tests employed is somewhat limited. It is hoped that, in future research, more evidence from a more representative sample can be added. For example, the party manifestos data set is in the process of being extended to Eastern Europe and Latin America. Similarly, the data for the fourth wave of the World Values Survey, which was undertaken in 1999 to 2001 and covers more countries from all over the world than the waves before, are to be published in due course. What are the implications of the results reported above for ecological economics? Besides sustainable scale and efficient allocation (correction of market failures), a fair and equitable distribution represents the third pillar of ecological economics (Costanza et al., 1997). Other ecological economists have gone further and argued that a fair and equitable distribution is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable scale (Boyce, 1994 and Martinez-Alier, 2002). Ecological economists have also always been highly skeptical towards the potential of markets on their own to achieve these three objectives. Based on the evidence reported in this article, I put forward the hypothesis that ecological economics, its values and objectives is more likely to be supported by left-wing political parties and individuals than their right-wing counterparts. Admittedly, so far, the hypothesis is based on indirect and tentative evidence, but ecological economists are invited to join the endeavor to test the hypothesis more directly in future research.