Just transition policy implementation in Spanish coal mining communities: feedback effects on policy attitudes and voting intentions

Implementing ambitious climate policies has presented significant political hurdles, particularly due to the concentrated adverse effects on communities reliant on fossil fuel industries. To address this distributive concern, proposals for ‘just transition’ strategies have emerged. While recent research suggests that just transition policy proposals can garner support from affected communities, whether political support can be sustained through such policies’ implementation remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the political consequences of the actual rollout of just transition policies among affected coal mining communities by the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) Government using a representative survey of individuals in a Spanish coal province a week before the 2023 general elections. We studied whether respondents continue to support the just transition policies, whether they perceived local changes, and the relationship between each of these and their intended support for PSOE in the 2023 election. We find that support for the coal mine closures and for worker compensation policies is stronger among direct beneficiaries (former coal workers), union members, those who trust mining unions, and those who are concerned about the environment. Support for those policies, moreover, is highly correlated with support for PSOE, with a slightly stronger pattern among former coal miners. We also find, however, that few respondents perceive changes linked to community-level just-transition projects – possibly due to delays in their roll-out – and that perceiving such changes is not correlated with support for PSOE. Our findings highlight the potential of just transition policies to generate positive feedback effects, with stronger impacts on those who directly receive material benefits than on those who benefit from community-level investments that may be harder to observe and to trace back to national government policies.Key policy insights Some governments are implementing ‘just transition’ policies to support workers and communities adversely affected by the closure of carbon-intensive industries, often with the support of labour unions.Government support measures for individual workers (financial and non-financial) are highly visible to the recipients and clearly linked to government policy. This creates the potential for reinforcing ‘policy feedback effects’: recipients are more likely to continue to support those policies and the party that implemented them.Government investment in communities (e.g. in industrial, cultural and environmental projects) also has the potential to generate reinforcing feedback effects, but this requires residents to notice these changes and attribute them to the policy.Climate-conscious parties implementing just transition policies need to clearly communicate to beneficiaries about the projects and their benefits, and link them to the government’s policy.