The paper analyzes differences in environmental performance in 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2012. The paper applies an agenda setting power approach by focusing on the interaction of agenda setters (governments and environmental movements) and veto players. This perspective puts partisan politics as well as social movement research in environmental studies in a new light. The results show that there are two policy styles in environmental politics: one contentious style in green politics where environmental movements and political parties struggle in an environmental policy dimension and a consensus style in the left-right dimension. The paper applies rigorous quantitative analysis which is innovative in the way that it applies various time and country specific time lags. Furthermore, the study analysis the political process in sequences which is novel for large-N quantitative studies. The paper draws on results of a large scale project conducted by the author.
