Political parties' influence on environmental policy in the forest: Natura 2000 forest sites in Germany as a case study

Abstract

AbstractWhile the partisan theory has already rendered initial insight on whether political parties can make a difference in environmental policy, only little is known about their influence on forest policy. This article attempts to reveal the role of green, left‐wing and right‐wing parties in the case of German Natura 2000 policy. By testing whether nature conservation or forest interests are strongly supported by the government policy outputs, we test the influence of the different parties that were part of 62 governments from 2004 to 2018 in 16 German Bundesländer. The results show that the German left‐wing parties take up the ideas of the nature conservation sector, while right‐wing parties foster typical forest interests. Furthermore, right‐wing parties very often maintain the policy status quo instead of making policy changes so that the implementation of the biodiversity goal of Natura 2000 often is postponed. The German Green party does not foster nature conservation interests more strongly than the SPD. Coalitions between right‐wing parties increase the chance for policy outputs that tend to favour forest interests.