News

Recent months have witnessed several high-profile elections including in India, the UK, Netherlands, France, the EU, Finland, Portugal and South Korea. 2024 has been called the year of elections, with 1.5 billion people across the world estimated to be voting in some kind of poll, and the coming months are set to include elections in countries such as the United States, Ireland, Austria, Sri Lanka and Georgia.

As climate change has come to attract more mainstream political attention it has started to play an increasingly important role in elections and party competition. Recent election results have also had pivotal impacts upon climate change policy, both at the domestic and international level.

The Political Studies Association (PSA) Environment Group and the PSA Elections, Public Opinion and Parties Group (EPOP) are co-organising a one-day academic workshop on elections and climate change.

This event will provide an opportunity for academics and practitioners to present research and reflect on the topic of climate change and elections. We therefore invite paper proposals or presentations/contributions* for this workshop. Papers or presentations should address in some form the overall topic of the workshop, this might include one of the following topics:

• The role/importance of climate change in one or more recent election.
• The climate policy implications of one or more recent election.
• Climate change and voting behaviour.
• Public opinion and climate change.
• Party politics and climate change.
• Voting behaviour/party politics/public opinion and the environment (more widely than just climate change), including topics such as biodiversity, deforestation or pollution.
• The political/electoral implications of a changing climate (e.g. extreme weather events).

Please submit short paper proposals or suggestions for contributions to the workshop to Dr Mitya Pearson (mitya.pearson@warwick.ac.uk). If you would like to discuss how you might take part, or have any questions about the session please also get in contact.

This will be a hybrid event, so it will be possible to present either in-person or virtually.

The final deadline for papers/ideas for contributions is Friday 20th December 2024, but we would welcome earlier submissions.

Workshop Date: Thursday 20th February 2025

Venue: University of Bristol / Hybrid

*We recognise that people may be not in a position to prepare a research paper in line with the workshop timeline, but we would also encourage people who are able to make more informal presentations/speaking contributions on relevant topics, to take part.