WORKING PAPER - The Environmental Policies of Populist Radical Right Governments

(2006, 2008), the mobilization of the group of “losers” by parties of the new populist right and by transformed established parties of the liberal and conservative right has provided the key impetus for the transformation of the party systems in Western Europe and the 2008 financial crisis only increased these changes (Kriesi and Pappas 2015). [...] 13 In the case of the glyphosate ban examined by Tosun and Debus (2021), the Austrian Freedom Party could promise benefits to domestic groups, indicate the misconduct of (foreign) companies in the process of risk assessment, and question the integrity of scientists. [...] It captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service, and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies. [...] The data starts in 1990 and the populism score begins in 1994, which means that for many of the most industrialized countries the heyday of environmental degradation and environmental investment is at least two decades in the past. [...] The police started investigating the water and air pollution complaints in 2019, and in October 2021, the prosecutor’s office closed the investigation based on expert opinions with no punishments announced.25 Another scandal surfaced for Orbán, when environmental groups sounded alarms over the excessive development around Balaton lake, which resulted in the firing of the director of the Balaton Li.