Letting the Positions Do the Talking? : Examining how emphasis on environmental issues varies when positional dispersion increases

Sammanfattning

This essay sets out to investigate if there exists a correlation between the amount of positional dispersion in a party system and the amount of emphasis parties put on environmental issues, with a special focus on the predictions made by saliency theory. More specifically this was done by examining the effect of ideology, being in opposition and fragmentation, which was used as a proxy for positional dispersion, on emphasis and the dispersion of emphasis, in regards to environmental issues. The result was that parties further to the left emphasize environmental issues more than parties to the right, although there were indications that this is only true when positional dispersion is high, and that the assumed amount of positional dispersion, as well as being in opposition, otherwise does not affect emphasis. It was also found that the dispersion of emphasis on environmental issues does not vary when the assumed positional dispersion is different. In summary, this strongly indicates that saliency theory cannot explain the variation in emphasis on environmental issues and likely not on other issues either. As for the interplay between emphasis and positional dispersion, this remains more inconclusive although the findings are interesting, opening up for further research.