How the Public Defines Climate Security

Paper presentation at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science, 2025. With Jessica Weeks.

Abstract: Under what conditions does the American public view climate change as a matter of national security, and what does that imply for climate policy attitudes? We treat securitization as a measurable public perception with the potential to affect policy support. We further theorize that securitization is more successful in the aftermath of major climate shocks that make climate impacts feel more urgent and proximal, heighten threat-related emotions, and raise perceived risk — conditions that also increase receptivity to elite security framing. We field two preregistered studies. Study 1, fielded in 2025, develops and validates a securitization index capturing whether respondents see an issue as implicating sovereignty, international power, military responsibility, and direct security threats. Study 2, planned for 2026, combines experimental survey methods with granular geospatial data on wildfire risk and exposure, leveraging quasi-random variation in wildfire timing to test whether wildfire exposure and elite security framing increase securitization.