@phdthesis{01KWV4J1EZ0DEFB8SB7WZ564GV,
  abstract     = {{Global warming is arguably the key challenge of our time. Meanwhile, populist radical
right parties have become major political forces in democracies around the globe.
These parties do not only challenge liberal democracy, but they often reject climate
action initiatives as well. In this dissertation, I investigate how populist radical right
parties use ideology to justify their climate positions. By adopting an interdisciplinary
approach, combining political science theories with political psychology concepts, I
present a holistic theoretical framework that helps explain how these parties justify
their climate positions. I analyze the climate discourse of four West European members
of this party family with three forms of content analysis (inductive and deductive hand-
coding, and automated content analysis instrumentalizing GPT4o, a large language
model), applied to 680 documents in total. In contrast to the literature that has pre-
dominantly focused on nationalism and populism as the key ideological features of
populist radical right climate communication, I find that conservatism and authoritari-
anism best characterize this discourse. By foregrounding these ideological features in
their climate discourse, these parties aim to appeal to the basic human values of ‘se-
curity,’ ‘tradition’ and, at least implicitly, ‘conformity.’ While the literature on the deter-
minants of individual-level climate skepticism indicates that hierarchically-minded
people in favor of inter-group inequality are staunch climate skeptics, populist radical
right parties predominantly aim to appeal to those valuing in-group safety and the
status quo. Complementing earlier findings, I report that populist radical right parties
attack climate policy proponents for being ‘hysterical’ and ‘irrational.’ However, I go
one step further by explicitly connecting this discourse to the psychological literature
that interprets these attitudes on the individual level as an example of the ‘authoritar-
ian dynamic.’ I contend that the presence of perceived normative threats to the status
quo, deference to in-group authorities and norms, and verbal aggression reflect an
ii
authoritarian ideology on the party level. Furthermore, the climate discourse of popu-
list radical left parties also exhibits authoritarian ideological traits, although there are
differences in how authoritarianism takes shape across the political spectrum. In con-
clusion, PRRPs frame climate action as a threat to the existing social, economic, and
political status quo. This threat to conservative values plays into the need for security,
justifying PRRP attacks on ‘irrational’ pro-climate actors. The fact that radicals on the
other side of the aisle also use authoritarianism shows that this ideological feature may
be used to shore up support for climate mitigation policies. As non-conservatives are
not immune to authoritarianism, democratic pluralists should be aware of the link be-
tween values, threats, and intolerance.}},
  author       = {{Praet, Jasper}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{299}},
  publisher    = {{Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences}},
  school       = {{Ghent University}},
  title        = {{Ideology, values, and climate obstructionism : analyzing populist radical right party discourse on climate policy}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}