| dc.description.abstract | Labor unions have often been major interest groups within most industrialized economies, and have played a crucial role in the development of worker’s rights. However, scholars disagree about the role and effect these labor unions have in climate policymaking. Because climate change policies will affect jobs, some argue that labor unions will work as climate policy opponents. Others point to empirical evidence, and instead claim that labor unions are climate policy proponents and allies for environmental groups. My goal is to contribute with more consistent answers to whether there exists a relationship between the presence and strength of labor unions and the amount of adopted climate policies. Additionally, I seek to better understand the importance of systems of interest representation for this relationship, and see this as an important part of labor unions’ strength in policymaking. I derive hypotheses from distributive conflict theory. Thus, climate change is seen as a policy problem that, at least in domestic politics, leads to distributive conflicts related to economy and employment. Some groups are burdened with costs while others receive benefits from the implementation of climate policies. Thus, the role of labor unions may be central when explaining climate policy action and inaction in industrialized economies. In order to explore these relationships, I utilize negative binomial count models on data on OECD countries from 1990 to 2018. I find partial support for my hypotheses that there exists a relationship between labor union density and the amount of adopted climate policies, and that this relationship is negative. Moreover, the relationship depends on the level of corporatism. However, the results are only somewhat robust, and more research is needed in order to get a better understanding of the issue. | eng |