Leaders ’ ‘ Green ’ Posts
The socio-demographic characteristics related to gender were dichotomized between male and female leaders while for age we considered the age of each leader as at 31 December , 2013 . Finally , in relation to leaders ’ party orientations we simplified the political spectrum between left- and rightwing parties without distinguishing between central or more extreme positions on each side . Our choice was made for comparative purposes among the 31 countries under considerations . Moreover , we followed the typology developed by Van Liere and Dunlap ( 1980 ) who found that left-wing and liberal political positions attributed more importance to environmental issues in comparison to right-wing and conservative positions .
The presence of environmental issues has been analyzed using the Facebook pages of main political leaders of 31 contemporary democracies ( plus the main political leaders of the European Union ) from 01 / 09 / 2012 to 31 / 10 / 2014 ( Table 1 ). the period under examination , had crossed the 15 % threshold ( with respect to the lower house ); and ( iv ) for countries with a presidential system , all the candidates that , in the presidential elections connected with the period under analysis , had crossed the 15 % threshold . L Regarding the European Union , the leaders included in the data set have been : each president of the European Commission , each president of the European Council , each president of the European Parliament , and each candidate for the presidency of the European Commission ( as the elections took place on 25 / 05 / 2014 ).
The Facebook pages were analyzed only in the actual period in which each single political actor included in the data set was effectively M the leader of her / his party . Therefore , not all pages of political leaders were analyzed for the 26 months under consideration .
In this set of countries , 127 political leaders were analyzed ( Table 2 ). J In order to decide which leaders to include in the data set , the following criteria were selected for the 26 months under consideration : ( i ) each head of government K of that period ; ( ii ) at least one executive and one opposition leader for each country ; ( iii ) for the countries with a parliamentary system , all leaders of those parties that , in the elections connected with
J
We have limited our analysis to Western and Latin-American countries for two different reasons : ( i ) for testing our hypotheses in a group of countries belonging to the same geo-political area , that is the Western countries ; ( ii ) for comparing this first set with another group of countries with low in-group variation such as Latin-America . To include other countries beyond Western and Latin-American countries would have rendered our dataset overly heterogeneous .
K
For the French case , all the heads of state and the prime ministers have been included . For the Swiss case , all the presidents of the federal council have been considered .
L
When needed , exceptional criteria have been applied for some countries .
M
A party leader can be replaced after a party meeting , following his / her resignation , etc . At the same time , a prime minister or a president can lose his / her executive position following his / her resignation or after having lost an election while he / she was in office . Consequently , some cases have been included into the data set only in a subset of the 26 months taken into consideration . This is the case , for example , of Mario Monti ( Italian Prime Minister from 16 November 2011 to 28 April 2013 ) who has been included in the analysis from 1 September 2012 to 28 April 2013 .
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