Another avenue of action: an examination of climate change countermovement industries’ use of PAC donations and their relationship to Congressional voting over time

ABSTRACT

The political mobilization of American business elites in the 1970s and 1980s has been well studied by political scientists. Environmental sociologists have explored how industries in this elite countermovement have organized to prevent environmental legislation. The literature often focuses on the efforts of this movement to shape public opinion on climate change. However, political scientists argue business elites are running several parallel strategies simultaneously in order to protect their interests. FEC data are utilized in multilevel logit models to examine how donations from industrial Political Action Committees (PACs) relate to Congressional representative’s environmental voting behavior over a 20-year period. Industries associated with the environmental countermovement have increasingly used PAC donations over time, and every additional $10,000 a representative received from countermovement industries significantly decreased odds of their taking the pro-environmental stance even when controlling for representatives’ demographics, districts, Congressional polarization and time-period.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change counter movement
• climate change denier movement
• political action committees
• roll-call voting
• league of conservation voters

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.