PhD Defence by Max Bradley
Why do citizens support or oppose climate policies, and when do these preferences change? This dissertation addresses these questions by examining how education shapes demand-side climate politics in advanced democracies. To do so it uses causal inference methods with observational data, original survey data, and a field experiment. While meta-analyses identify education as a strong socio-demographic predictor of climate policy support, I argue its role is more complex than as a key independent variable in a regression analysis. Education is a multi-dimensional factor that structures how individuals and communities experience, adapt to, and mobilize around decarbonization. I theorize three inter-related channels through which education shapes climate policy preferences. First, it operates as a materially conditional political divide structuring support and opposition. Second, it functions as a resource shaping the capacity of actors to adapt economically to decarbonization. Third, it serves as a tool through which support can be built via educational interventions. Each empirical chapter tests one of these channels.
The first empirical chapter reconciles political science research on education-based divides in climate preferences and Green party support with political economy work emphasizing material threats to workers in high-emitting sectors. I argue that the education divide in climate preferences is conditional on exposure to material risk. Using data from eleven rounds of the European Social Survey combined with sectoral-level emissions data from the OECD, I show that gaps in support for carbon taxes, green subsidies, and Green parties narrow as material exposure increases, driven by declining support among highly educated workers. Panel analyses using the German Socio-Economic Panel indicate that these patterns reflect preference updating, not self-selection.
The second empirical chapter advances the political economy of climate change literature by refining exposure-based accounts of decarbonization. I distinguish between exposure and adaptive capacity, arguing that education is a key resource enabling some exposed actors – such as high-emitting firms and communities – to adjust to decarbonization. Across two empirical studies in the UK context, I first show that following the 2008 Climate Change Act, high-emitting firms in communities with a highly educated workforce adapted and grew, while comparable firms in communities with a less educated workforce experienced economic stagnation. Then, using original survey data, I show that this economic divergence is reflected in the climate policy preferences of residents, consistent with sociotropic theories of political behaviour.
Finally, the third empirical chapter (co-authored with Rens Chazottes, Susanna Garside, and Nina Lopez-Uroz) investigates whether educational interventions can be used as a tool to build support for climate policies that impose visible and concentrated costs. In a field experiment conducted with 1,845 students across ten French universities, we find that workshop participation increases support for costly climate policies – such as a beef tax or flight ban – by an average of seven percentage points, with effects persisting for six weeks. These effects are partly driven by participants updating their beliefs about policy effectiveness. Overall, this dissertation shows that education plays a multi-dimensional role in climate politics, shaping political conflict, conditioning economic adjustment, and actively building support for decarbonization in advanced democracies.
Max Bradley is a PhD candidate at the European University Institute under the supervision of Filip Kostelka and Simon Hix. His research sits at the intersection of political economy and political behaviour. His doctoral work examines the politics of the green transition, focusing on how different actors respond to and are shaped by decarbonization and climate policies. In 2024 he was a Junior Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. In August 2026, he will join Brown University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs.
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