Environmental Belief Systems in Western Europe

Abstract

For most parts of the 20th century, class and religious predispositions guided individuals' perceptions of the political space in Western Europe. Recently, however, analysts have noted the weakening of class and religious cleavages. Moreover, new social movements emerged in Western Europe, despite the inapplicability of traditional class and partisan cues to ecological issues. In light of the presumed lack of sophistication of mass publics, these developments raise the following question. What mental structures, if any, do individuals employ in evaluating competing Old and New Politics issues? In an attempt to answer the question, we analyze citizens' environmental belief systems in four West European countries. We find that environmental belief systems are substantially constrained by general political predispositions in Germany and the Netherlands. In contrast, environmental attitudes are significantly less constrained in France and Great Britain. These crossnational variations in belief systems constraint are attributed to varying activity levels of environmental elites. The implications of these findings for the sources of belief systems constraint and for the sophistication of mass beliefs are assessed.