Scholarship in international law aims at addressing global forest governance comprehensively. This article reviews the recent contribution Global Forest Governance - Legal Concepts and Policy Trends by Rowena Maguire and puts it into the perspective of recent political and policy science research on global forests. While finding Maguire's volume being a very timely and valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary discussions on international forest governance, we identify some weaknesses which are mostly rooted in methodological critique and a lack of a systematic framework for analysis.
The deliverable D6.1 of the LIFT project explores what types of discourses are used in six European Union (EU) member states' Rural Development Programs (RDP) and other agricultural policy documents and how they incorporate ecological approaches acrossthree Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) periods. This multiple case study highlights similarities and differences in the dominant discourses as emerging from national policy documents in the following selected EU member states: France, Germany (Bavaria), Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It also demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to gain understanding about the dominant discourses expressed in these documents in relation to how ecological approaches are defined, the policy rationale for encouraging ecological approaches and the expected consequences of doing so. Conceptually, we focused on two types of discourses identified from the literature: 1) the three CAP discourses: i) neomercantilism; ii) neoliberalism and iii) multifunctionality, and 2) the five socio-political discourses of Rural Development (RD): iv) agri-ruralist, v) hedonist, vi) utilitarian, vii) nature conservation and viii) community sustainability. These types of discourses were together integrated in a model, where each policy discourse depicts agriculture as accomplishing a specific function. The theoretical framework is grounded within a political economy perspective. This means that policy develops because of confrontation between different concerned agents with different interest, pushing for different objectives. The state acts as an intermediary between these agents and aims at ensuring consensus and maintenance of agreement. Policy documents are therefore often the result of competing discourses and contradicting policy objectives. Across EU member states, the results show that ecological approaches are mainly depicted with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominating sub-discourses of nature conservation and agri-ruralism. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in the use of the neomercantilist discourse in the last CAP period. This parallels what the previous literature finds in Commissioners' speeches: a reappearance of the traditional neomercantilist discourse in the CAP agenda 2014-2020. Farming systems (with farming practices) related to agroecology, biodiversity-based and organic farming are among the most commonly mentioned farming systems.
Key Points • Understanding the impacts of SDG 16 on forests and people requires attention to the power dynamics that shape how all 17 SDGs are interpreted and implemented across the Global North and South. • As SDGs were agreed upon by nation states, SDG 16 places a strong emphasis on state power and the rule of law. • Yet inclusive governance requires the involvement of diverse actors, and consideration for customary laws and other non-state forms of rulemaking at global to local scales. • Many national laws governing forests and land use favour political elite, large-scale industry actors and international trade. • The development and strengthening of legal frameworks that support all of the SDGs – including those relevant to human rights, income inequalities, land tenure, gender and environmental protection – requires equal or greater priority than law enforcement. Otherwise, law enforcement will reinforce inequities and unsustainable practices. • SDG 16 provides an opportunity to overcome the stereotypes of the Global North as the referential role model for peace and democracy, by highlighting the role of the North in fostering market inequalities and global conflicts, and drawing attention to barriers to democratic and inclusive participation within the Global North. • How transparency, accountability and justice are conceived and prioritised shapes their impact on forests, as well as the degree to which their achievement either empowers forest-dependent peoples or excludes them from meaningful and informed engagement.
The 'socioenvironmental state' conceptualisation probes how contested, shifting, emergent boundaries of the state contain the possibilities for transformative change in the Anthropocene. The paper outlines a research programme capable of addressing the questions: who becomes authorised to govern change, who is required to make changes on the ground, and what subjectivities and pathways emerge in the context of rapid rate change? The conceptualisation unpacks three boundaries: state– society, its socionatural emergence, and the relationships between boundary-making and belonging to address these questions and better account for the successes and failures of attempts at governing an uncertain, rapidly changing world. In this analysis, 'environmental change' arises as a stochastic, relational becoming – ecologies and resources are emergent with the social-politics of governing them – suggesting that more analytical attention is required on how 'environmental challenges' and their 'drivers of change' are conceived and delimited. Together, these theoretical insights help reveal the way that the micro-politics of local resource use and the contradictory acceptance and refusals of authority and subjection are not only products of, but also productive of, larger scale political economies, socionatures, governance, and political struggles. The aim is to contribute towards a reimagination of political authority that begins to capture the complex interplay between our attempts at governing a changing world and the inadvertent authorisations, inclusions, and exclusions that we produce in those efforts. The paper partially illustrates the conceptual ideas with an account of forestry and climate change in Nepal. In a context wherein programmes to govern resources have become of global concern, probing the implications of these points is crucial. It is not only that states govern resources with particular consequences for 'environmental change' or 'sustainability', but also that the act of governing resources (re)produces the socioenvironmental boundaries of the state with profound implications for how future transformations can unfold.
Welfare, and the role of social democracy in defining its content and meaning, is often described as one of Sweden's distinguishing features. However, in the quest for liberalization and marketization, reforms in past decades have substantially changed the political landscape. These developments have led many to question the viability of describing the main political actors and their attitudes towards the welfare state in terms of left or right. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ideological convergence and past and current political cleavages by analysing the welfare debate on freedom of choice between the two main political opponents in Swedish politics over three decades. Using a morphological approach, where ideologies are viewed as distinctive configurations of political concepts creating specific conceptual patterns depending on how they are combined, the analysis focuses on the content of the concept of choice by examining the conceptual relationships between political concepts such as choice, the public and the private, equality, equity and need. The analysis reveals a convergence suggesting that the parties have united around a narrower concept of freedom of choice that relates to how it is implemented in welfare services, that is, the choice between different providers of welfare services. However, important differences remain, which are expressed in the parties' differing conceptions of the power resources citizens need to become truly free individuals. These findings suggest that, while freedom of choice has become a central concept in the political debate, it is not central to the parties' ideologies. Instead, the core of the parties' ideologies appears to be articulated in e.g. the political cleavages that remain, which can be described as differing views on the role of politics and competing conceptions of need and equality. It is how these cleavages are translated into policies that will determine possible welfare choices in the future.
The ways of organizing political problem solving in society are not static. A pluralistic dynamic society requires a continious reconsideration and adaption of its political institutions, i.e. political institutionalization. Institutionalization demands prior organizing activities among actors for political aims. Organizing activities can be seen both internally, externally or between existing organisations and institutions . The degree of institutionalization reflects the organizing activities' survival capacity. The higher the degree of institutionalization the more likely it is that the organizing activity will become a formally based organisation or institution, or will change the dominating values of organisations or institutions. The degree of institutionalization is discussed using the concepts of adaptability, complexity, autonomy and flexibility. The thesis represents a problem-oriented implementation approach where individuals' joint ways of organizing problem- solving are the basis for analysis of both policy-realization and political institutionalization. Policy is defined as ideas and the ways of creating institutional arrangements in order to realize them. A "policy-problem", defined as the empirical question answered by examining the process of institutionalization, is used to study the policy-processes in the field of occupational safety and health. The ways in which individuals collectively organize in order to create a good working environment are studied using the concept of implementation structures. These are defined as phenomenological administrative units of analysis, i.e. groups of individuals empirically judged to take part in solving the policy problem. ; digitalisering@umu
Most studies of emerging Swedish parties and politics have mainly focused on the Swedish Social Democrats and their struggle for democracy and political power, most as a prelude to the so called "Swedish Model". Competing parties have received attention from historians on the national level, but their local origin remains to large extent an open field. The aim of this study is to investigate how local political factors shaped the emerging liberal party organizations in two small Swedish towns. By a case-oriented comparison two towns are contrasted, Skövde in Skaraborg county and Filipstad in Värmland. This thesis suggests that the distinction between national politics and municipal government, based on the interests of economic elites, was transformed during the period 1880-1920. During this period local elections and local government became increasingly sites for political struggle between different parties, with new agendas. With a framework that considered parties in light of their functions rather than organizational types and theoretical concepts borrowed from the sociology of social movements, the thesis main results suggest that political mobilization and liberal party-formation was depending on the local political traditions. The theoretical framework made it possible to pinpoint both similarities and differences between the cases. The results of the study indicate that the historical tradition is central to parties to emerge and flourish. This suggests that it is more meaningful to focus attention on local and regional processes to understand the historical development than has previously been done. ; De svenska partiernas historia är relativt väl känd på nationell nivå, men deras lokala ursprung är mindre utforskat och inte minst gäller det borgerliga partier. I den här avhandlingen undersöks hur lokalpolitiska faktorer formade de framväxande frisinnade, eller liberala, lokalorganisationerna i Filipstad och Skövde. Avhandlingen visar att politisk mobilisering och politisk organisering i städerna i hög grad formades av lokala och regionala politiska traditioner. Den visar också att kommunerna var politiserade långt före att de nationella partierna tog hand om valen och kommunala frågor. Studien visar att det fanns en kontinuitet mellan äldre lokala partier och de lokalavdelningar av nationella partier som etablerades efter sekelskiftet 1900. Det var en kontinuitet som återspeglades såväl ideologiskt som organisatoriskt. Avhandlingens resultat pekar på att det är mer meningsfullt att fokusera uppmärksamheten mot lokala och regionala politiseringsprocesser för att förstå den generella politiska utvecklingen i Sveriges historia än vad som tidigare har gjorts. Anders Forsell är doktorand i historia inom Forskarskolan i regionalt samhällsbyggande. Det här är hans doktorsavhandling.
This study starts out with the hypothesis that the integration process in Europe is connected to cross-border régionalisation, a process which supports the institutionalization of subnational cross-border cooperation - region-building. Cross-border régionalisation is characterized by the decentralisation of vertical links and enhanced opportunities for horizontal links across state borders. In addition, political integration is expected to have some impact on the cross-border institutional forms that emerge at the subnational level. Three different approaches are utilized in order to establish the empirical connection between political integration and region-building. These are: an analysis of the factors which determine the general pattern of cross-border cooperation in Europe, an analysis of the policy network related to the regional and structural policies of the European Union (EU), and case studies of cooperation in the heartland of Europe, the Regio Basiliensis along the external border of the EU, and the EUREGIO along one of the internal borders. Two institutional factors are found to have a significant impact on the number of subnational cross-border cooperations, EU-membership and centrality. Federal constitution was shown not to be significant. It is suggested that the interaction between actors at different politico- administrative levels creates network relations, which typically bring both private and public actors together. More precisely, region-building is described as the outcome of the interaction which takes place between actors. A closer examination of the emerging policy network shows that community initiatives, the Interreg-programme in particular, improve the prospects for multilevel interaction. The EU plays a crucial role in providing the incentives for cooperation by increasing resource dependency and by establishing direct ties between the European Commission and a large number of subnational actors through partnerships. It appears as if the Commission wishes to demonstrate its capacity to deal with problems relevant to individual citizens. By, in part, bypassing central governments, it seems to increase its own importance vis- à-vis member states. The modus vivendi of cross-border region-building and régionalisation is the degree to which institutional actors at different levels share the same objectives. As shown by the case studies, there is a common interest in cross-border cooperation up to the point were public statues are introduced. Interests seem to coincide as long as the structures and contents of cross-border cooperation do not ultimately challenge the authority of state institutions. Therefore, it is not surprising that it seems impossible to give cross-border regions any rights under international law. Functional cooperation, rather than regionalist manifestations of cultural or political unity across borders, constitutes the backbone of region-building. Activities transcending borders are less controversial than those that may contribute to the establishment of new borders. It is concluded that region-building is a process which is embedded in the institutionalization of a multi-level interaction pattern. More favourable multilevel relations have been achieved through the transfer of some authority to the supranational level. This is the main reason why traditional integration theory fails to explain why there is a connection between political integration and cross-border cooperation. ; digitalisering@umu
The EU Renewable Energy Strategy (RES) Directive requires that each member state obtain 20% of its energy supply from renewable sources by 2020. If fully implemented, this implies major changes in institutions, infrastructure, land use, and natural resource flows. This study applies a political geography perspective to explore the transition to renewable energy use in the heating and cooling segment of the Swedish energy system, 1980–2010. The Nordic welfare model, which developed mainly after the Second World War, required relatively uniform, standardized local and regional authorities functioning as implementation agents for national politics. Since 1980, the welfare orientation has gradually been complemented by competition politics promoting technological change, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This combination of welfare state organization and competition politics provided the dynamics necessary for energy transition, which occurred in a semi-public sphere of actors at various geographical scales. However, our analysis, suggest that this was partly an unintended policy outcome, since it was based on a welfare model with no significant energy aims. Our case study suggests that state organization plays a significant role, and that the EU RES Directive implementation will be uneven across Europe, reflecting various welfare models with different institutional pre-requisites for energy transition.
What is the political significance of affiliation with voluntary associations for people with and without foreign backgrounds in Sweden? Does associational affiliation offer an opportunity to influence the political decision-making process for those otherwise disfavoured in terms of political resources? Or does it rather aggravate the political marginalisation of people with foreign backgrounds? This thesis is based on two large-scale surveys that have been designed explicitly to deal with questions of this sort. It is shown that there are substantial differences in associational affiliation between people with and without foreign backgrounds. Interestingly, these differences are strongly correlated with patterns of ethnification and ethnic discrimination in Swedish society. Individuals who have migrated to Sweden from Western Europe and North America participate in voluntary associations to the same extent as native Swedes. In contrast, the levels of associational affiliation are consistently lower among people who have migrated to Sweden from other parts of the world, even controlling for age, education, occupation and other potentially important factors. The study supports the widely held notion that there is a positive causal relation between associational affiliation and political participation. However, this seems to be true only with regard to certain forms of political participation and only seldom to such an extent that differences in associational affiliation can be said to strongly affect the relative levels of political engagement of people with and without foreign backgrounds. In particular, the observed differences in associational affiliation seem to have little to do with the often debated marginalisation of immigrants in the electoral arena. ; Etnisk organisering och politisk integration i storstaden
This dissertation is about expert influence and democracy and focuses on how political decision-making about issues highly dependent on qualified scientific expertise should come about in order to be democratic. The primary purpose of the study is to evaluate, from a democratic perspective, the Swedish legislative process concerned with medical gene technology ? an archetypal case where the decision-making processes involve a marked level of expertise. It is argued that a democratic decision-making process should be characterized by openness and transparency and the possibility for a variety of standpoints to be visible and open to debate. This democratic norm is valid for all decision-making processes and the crucial question is whether a decision-making process highly dependent on qualified scientific expertise would have difficulties meeting such posed democratic criteria. The author makes a systematic empirical and normative analysis of the decision-making process in question, which is anatomised and evaluated against the democratic norm. The overall result of the study is that scientific experts have been able to define the problems on the political agenda and, thereby, had influenced the process as a whole. However, this has not constrained a variety of standpoints to be visible, but views expressed about the experts? problem definitions have prompted more frequent responses from the political decision-makers than other views, which only occasionally have been responded to. The Swedish legislative process concerned with medical gene technology has thereby partly deviated from democratic ideals.
Political participation is promoted as a central component in a democracy. But what specifically is it that makes participation valuable and how do different forms of participation differ in regard to outcomes? A central aim of this study is to understand why different forms of participation produce different kinds of effects. The argument developed is that participation can be understood as having two fundamental dimensions ? a conflictual and an institutional. These dimensions are used as tools for creating a typology of participation consisting of conflictual and non-conflictual, and by the institutional dimension, integral, semi-integral and non-integral types. Analysing and comparing participation forms from the perspective of these types and through the lens of political equality helps us to understand the effects of participation on both a structural and individual level. Political equality is a central normative value that forms of political participation must be related to. However, if we are to take political participation at the local level seriously the idea of political equality should be related to the character of the political issue and focus should be on equality within political processes. The analysis shows that the differences in outcomes are substantial and varied. The character of the different types and their usefulness for different political issues means that they should be regarded as complementary and overlapping rather than mutually exclusive.The study's empirical analysis shows that even though a lot of effort has been put into including citizens in local Swedish politics, the results have been somewhat disappointing. In understanding why this is the case it is important to consider the over-arching democratic context. This is also found to be important is explaining the rather uneasy cooperation between citizens and public decision-makers such as local politicians and civil servants. This suggests that the limited impact of new forms of participation can be understood in relation to their relative strength (or lack of it) in the discourse of mainstream politics. This suggests an evolution towards one of two possible futures. The first is a position where the reforms successively gain legitimacy and evolve into participatory institutions where participants hold substantial power and are able to determine the outcome of decisions. Alternatively a position may emerge where the lack of genuine interest in wider participation leads to scepticism and disillusion about the possibility to democratise local politics. At present there are signs of both of these developments.
Focusing on national election campaigns in Sweden, this study examines how candidates' political networks may influence who becomes member of Parliament in a flexible list system. Flexible list systems enable candidates placed on a non-eligible seat during the nomination process within the party organization, to still get elected via the voters' optional preferential votes. The data used is derived from a unique survey including a total sample of candidates elected to the Swedish Parliament 1998–2014 via preferential votes after being placed on a non-eligible seat during the nomination process. The data also includes acquaintances to these candidates defined as their political networks. The method used to track down the network members, was to ask the candidates for acquaintances who helped them during the nomination process and the election campaign. The motivation, resources and recruiting networks amongst these respondents are compared to those of candidates, and their political networks, who, despite being placed on an eligible seat during the nomination process ended up losing a seat in Parliament as a consequence of the flexible list system. The analysis shows how dissatisfaction with the nomination process creates a motivation to use the preferential voting system in order to overrule the decisions made by the party. The result also indicates that the elected candidates and their political networks are more active within voluntary associations than their opponents. Furthermore, important differences in temporal resources are shown. Elected candidates can participate in the election campaign full-time and are able to take leave of absence from their ordinary jobs, while the opposite applies for the political networks. The political networks supporting elected candidates do not work full-time within the party to the same extent as networks supporting non-elected candidates. A suggestion for future research is to examine the importance of voluntary associations in relation to the use of preferential votes in flexible list systems.
This study deals with the issue of democratization in Latin America during the 20th century, and in particular the role of the left in this process. The purpose of this study is to empirically analyze the role of the left as a political actor in the process of democratization toward the deepening of the democratic rule in Latin America. The research questions are: what role did the left have in the transitions to electoral democracies during the 20th century in Latin America? Why did the left have the role it had in the transitions? How does the left's view of democracy affect the transition to electoral democracy, and the further democratization to deepen democratic rule? What structural constraints affect the left's ability to deepen democratic rule? A comparative qualitative method and different theoretical concepts of democracy, democratization, elite perspective, mobilization and organizations have been used, and examples from different Latin American cases are given. One empirical conclusion is that the role of the left in the transitions to electoral democracies varies from participation with active left leaders, collective left actions, to not have any significant role at all. A second empirical conclusion is that in cases where left wing governments have tried to enforce a model of participatory democracy, the result has been " coup d'état" or rebellions conducted by military forces and supported by the economic elite and the United States of America. In other cases when left parties in government instead have remained within the framework of an elite democracy, the result has rather been stabilization of the liberal democratic rule. The main theoretical conclusions are as follows: the theoretical discussion about democratic consolidation and the deepening of democracy have to consider that different actors' (in this study the left) preferences for various models of democracy differ; the actors' view of democracy matter in the game of democratic development and democratic consolidation; and the relations between the elite actors' preferences for different models of democracy determine the outcome of a specific form of democratic model (in this study electoral democracy, liberal democracy or participatory democracy).
This dissertation examines key characteristics and factors shaping the leadership style of Swedish Prime Ministers (PMs). Based on the research of the American presidency, an interactionist framework is developed which draws upon institutional theory and political psychological theory. The analysis is advanced by exploring multiple sources and is based on four cases of leadership styles: two single party Social Democratic PMs, Ingvar Carlsson and Göran Persson, as well as two center/right coalition PMs, Thorbjörn Fälldin and Carl Bildt. Leadership style is studied through a focused comparison of the PMs' performance of four functions. Thus, the four PMs are studied as staffers and organizers of the cabinet and the Government Offices, decision makers, communicators and crisis managers. The results indicate that the office of the PM is elastic, accommodating a wide-ranging variation of leadership styles. The Social Democratic PMs display the most uniform leadership styles, but, rather surprisingly, they also have the most dissimilar leadership styles among the four cases. The center/right PMs' approaches differ to a great extent from one another, displaying mixed forms of leadership styles. The analysis explains how the PMs' leadership styles are shaped based on the interaction between their distinct personal characteristics and surrounding institutions. Thus, the dissertation concludes that leadership theories developed in a presidential setting are largely applicable in a parliamentary setting and that political behavior is not dictated by institutions such as formal structures or norms. The results encourage a reassessment of how personality, as an explanatory factor, is applied in mainstream political science. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the need for reconsidering the presidentialisation thesis and the notion of dominant leadership as there are alternative pathways to prime ministerial influence which are disregarded in the debate.
