Green Backlash and Democracy

Human-induced climate change is changing human society by creating and amplifying threats in many areas of the world while at the same time creating new opportunities in other areas. In response, many governments are pursuing policies that seek to slow down climate change while at the same time continuing to support policies that lead to climate-changing emissions.

In this memo, Dustin Tingley, Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Public Policy and the Department of Government at Harvard University, questions whether and how these changes are stoking “green backlash,” which includes a range of formal and informal activities that respond to green policies, green investments, or any number of their downstream implications including affordability and aesthetics; and second, whether climate change itself or climate policies are impacting the viability and quality of demographic governance.

The theoretical and empirical literature is relatively thin on both of these questions. Ample opportunities exist to explore these questions, but care needs to be taken to ensure that a) lessons are learned from reactions to other phenomena (such as localized environmental problems separate from climate change per se) and b) the sources of backlash are isolated and not overdetermined by broader characterizations of political “voice” attributed to populist and far-right party movements. A helpful starting point is recognizing that climate change and policies have distributional consequences. As such, both adaptation and mitigation policies will be politically contested. This political contestation will take various forms, each of which has implications for green backlash and democratic institutions.

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On January 30–31, 2025, IGCC convened a first-of-its-kind research incubator to examine the links between climate change, democratic backsliding, and public backlash against green policies. The conversation aimed to bridge the divide between scholars within the political and climate sciences to promote interdisciplinary studies at the crossroads between global environmental and governance challenges. Workshop participants prepared memos before the meeting responding to two questions: under which conditions can climate change and climate policies trigger a green backlash? And what are the consequences of climate change disruptions and green backlash for democracy? These memos are now published as part of an ongoing IGCC essay series on Climate Change, Green Backlash, and Democracy.