The Impacts of Climate Protests on Opinion and Policy: the Case of the Netherlands 2019
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2021 (NOS, 2019) The impacts of climate protests on opinion and policy: the case of the Netherlands 2019 Author: Paul van Dijk (6968260) Master Program: Sustainable Development – Earth System Governance E-mail: [email protected] Supervisor: Dr. James Patterson Second reader: Dr. Rakhyun E. Kim ECT: 30 Date: 4-7-2021 Table of contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 4 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 2 Theoretical background .................................................................................................................. 8 2.1 Theory of representative democracy ........................................................................................... 8 2.2 Public opinion ............................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.1 Public climate opinion ......................................................................................................... 10 2.3 Social movement theory (collective action and conflict) ............................................................ 11 2.4 Political opportunity theory ....................................................................................................... 12 2.5 Effective protests........................................................................................................................ 13 2.5.1 Mobilization and magnitude................................................................................................ 13 2.5.2 Issue framing ....................................................................................................................... 13 2.5.3 Political allies ....................................................................................................................... 14 2.5.4 Type of protest .................................................................................................................... 14 2.5.6 Changing socio-cultural beliefs ............................................................................................ 14 2.6 Operationalization ...................................................................................................................... 15 3 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 19 3.1 Research methods ...................................................................................................................... 19 3.1.1 case-study............................................................................................................................ 20 3.2 Data sources and processing the data ........................................................................................ 20 3.2.1 National climate policy ........................................................................................................ 20 3.2.2 National climate opinion ..................................................................................................... 21 3.2.3 Assessing the climate protests ............................................................................................ 25 4 Results ............................................................................................................................................... 27 4.1 Changes or development in national climate policies ................................................................ 27 4.1.1 Amendments ....................................................................................................................... 27 4.1.2 Parliamentary questions ...................................................................................................... 28 4.1.3 Motions ............................................................................................................................... 30 4.1.4 Bills ...................................................................................................................................... 31 4.1.5 National Climate Agreement ............................................................................................... 31 4.1.6 Climate act ........................................................................................................................... 32 4.2 National climate opinion ............................................................................................................ 33 4.2.1 Public opinion polls.............................................................................................................. 33 4.2.1 Climate policy positions and voting polls ............................................................................. 39 4.3 Climate ...................................................................................................................................... 42 1 4.3.1 Timing and magnitude ......................................................................................................... 42 4.3.2 Type of protests (Level of disruption) .................................................................................. 43 4.3.3 Providing feasible targets and solutions .............................................................................. 44 4.3.4 Presence of political allies ................................................................................................... 45 5 Discussion .......................................................................................................................................... 49 5.1 Discussion on results .................................................................................................................. 49 5.1.1 National climate policies ..................................................................................................... 49 5.1.1 Public climate opinion ......................................................................................................... 49 5.1.2 Effective protests ................................................................................................................. 49 5.1.3 hidden effects ...................................................................................................................... 52 5.2 Discussion on methodology ........................................................................................................ 53 5.2.1 Party policy positions........................................................................................................... 53 5.2.2 Public opinion ...................................................................................................................... 54 6 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 55 Reference list ....................................................................................................................................... 57 Appendix 1 Determining climate policy positions through party manifestos ....................................... 69 Appendix 2 Coding method .................................................................................................................. 71 Appendix 3 Voting poll data ................................................................................................................. 77 Appendix 4 Media Analysis .................................................................................................................. 80 2 Abstract Significant parts of society have had enough of the ongoing and increasing ecological crisis, known as climate change, caused by our current ways of living. Society is responding to the climate crisis through collective action and formatting climate movements. These movements are crucial in achieving social and political transformations. They have the power to influence political and media agendas. Protests, one of the major tools climate movements use to cause change, have the potency to increase awareness and urgency of the problem by motivating public and political action. Social movement studies usually emphasize their research focus on single causal factors, such as public opinion, the political environment, or electoral competition. Studies that combine multiple key measures, track them over time or compare them through multiple relevant units concerning policy outcomes are lacking. The dissatisfaction with the status quo resulted in the largest global and national scaled climate protests in history in 2019. The impact of recent climate protests and how they affected the social- and political arena is still unclear. This research conducted an in-depth case study on if and how the series of climate protests between February and December 2019 affected public opinion and climate policies in the Netherlands. Determining a change in opinion was done by examining long-standing climate opinion polls and analyzing fluctuations in voting behaviour. Analyzing the parliamentary record determined a change in climate policies. Second, it explained why the series of 2019 climate protests caused a (lack of) change