In recent years, an unprecedented number of voluntary climate commitments have been made by a wide array of non-state and subnational actors.

The overarching aim of the project is to further knowledge about the role of the welfare state for climate policy attitudes. Are people more willing to accept decarbonization policies if they are compensated by a generous welfare state?

Theories of natural resource management and conservation, such as adaptive management and adaptive co-management, are based on strong but mostly untested assumptions about the importance of engaging local stakeholders in conservation and management efforts.

This project examines how supranational and non-state actors are anticipating changes in the biosphere and how they are developing their capacities to be able to rapidly respond to humanitarian crises and surprises in the multilateral contexts in which they operate.

‘Bringing the social dimension into deforestation-free supply chain initiatives: Lessons from Europe’s beef and soy imports from Brazil’ is a three-year research project carried out by researchers at Stockholm University and Osnabrück University (2021-2023). The project is funded by Formas.

The amount of international climate cooperation outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has risen sharply, which has created an institutional patchwork of agreements in the governance of global climate and energy.

In the political and academic debates alike it is often presumed that increased engagement from civil society in deliberative practices strengthens democratic institutions. We believe that this presumption rests on a vague and underdeveloped notion of political equality.

The role of non-state initiatives in the transformation of Sweden into a fossil-free welfare state.

Democracy, Autocracy, and International Cooperation is a research project exploring why, how, and under what conditions countries’ political regimes affect how they behave in international cooperation. The project is funded by the European Research Council and the Swedish Research Council.

Demscore (acronym for research infrastructure for Democracy, Environment, Migration, Social policy, Conflict, and Representation) brings together some of the world’s leading contextual research infrastructures and databases located at various Swedish universities.

This project examines how public broadcasting organizations in Europe have responded to the growing presence of broadly defined populist and extremist parties, political actors who tend to oppose the protection of minorities, equality between women and men, the rights of migrants and refugees and who have seen increased support in recent years.

Research project that examines to what extent and how international law influences states’ decision-making and actual behaviour when it comes to the use of force.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a global health crisis. It is expected to lead to lasting changes in all policy areas of global cooperation and transnational governance – including health, mobility, trade, industry, finance, and sustainability.

EPOC is a transdisciplinary research project that explores how future imaginaries are changing in the aftermath of the pandemic. Collaborating with societal partners and stakeholders, the research group explores the new fantasmatic orders that emerge and shape global environmental politics and governance in the post-coronavirus world.

The Role of Integrated Governance for a Just and Legitimate Adaptation to Climate Risks.

A number of previous studies have found compelling evidence for a regulatory expansion in the environmental area that has been ongoing since the beginning of the 1970’s in most industrialized countries.

Human impacts on global ecosystems are now threatening the very foundations of human welfare and it is generally recognized that mitigating the ecological crisis will require a fundamental reorganization of the social, political, and economic world. In other words, we are facing a Great Green Transformation.

The Historical Data Archive (H-DATA) is a hub of historical country-level data going as far back as the French revolution or even further and offers unparalleled depth of data and temporality, enabling researchers to answer critical questions about the past but to also understand the origins of, and find historical parallels to, present-day problems.

A key feature of global governance is the possibility to monitor governments alleged of noncompliance with international treaties. Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) routinely conduct onthe-spot monitoring missions to assess if governments are violating international conventions.

Globalisation and New Political Rights. The Challenges of the Rights to Inclusion, Self-Determination and Secession.

Why, how, and with what consequences do global governance institutions gain, sustain and lose legitimacy? These issues are at the heart of LegGov – a six-year research program in Stockholm, Lund, and Gothenburg.

Imagining, narrating and acting upon a changing climate.

Research project based at Stockholm University and funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and the Social Sciences, 2019-2021.

Drawing on the notion that marginalized groups may become empowered when the political system signals inclusiveness, this project investigates whether visible political leadership by minorities and women can enhance political engagement among these groups.

Assessing conflicts, co-creating solutions.

At a time when the UN climate negotiations appear to be making little progress, non-state initiatives on climate change are thriving.

The SDGs and Agenda 2030 aim to achieve fifteen sustainable development goals through global and multi-stakeholder partnerships (Goal 17) and inclusive governance mechanisms at all levels (Goal 16).

To reach the Paris Agreement goals, energy transitions must be greatly accelerated. This project assesses the carbon neutrality plans of countries and cities, studies their potential political, societal and economic consequences, and examines whether a climate club could accelerate the transitions.

Many policies currently being enacted to slow climate change and environmental degradation will have distributive - and thereby political - implications.

This project will investigate how major geopolitical powers formulate transformative strategies for decarbonization and resilience to large-scale climate risk.

Private companies are increasingly adapting to climate change, and these responses can have widespread effects on society, affecting areas like water access, safety, and public services. Our project seeks to map and explain these public-private interactions in climate adaptation and assess their potential to advance democratic and effective adaptation.

Reconstructing democracy in times of crisis: a voter-centered perspective (REDEM) aims to create a common platform for researchers on democracy together with non-academic experts focusing on voting behavior.

Rising to the Challenge of the Climate Transition: EU's Leadership in a Just and Effective Transformation towards Climate Neutrality amidst Turbulence, Crises, and Political Conflicts.

This project studies how the roles of European lawyers as guardians of the rule of law are being renegotiated and redefined under increasing pressure to act as ‘police’ or agents of the state in combating the crimes of money laundering and terrorism financing.

Shaping the Online Public Sphere: How and Why do Democracies Regulate Social Media Platforms and with what Consequences?

This project explores the understanding of trust for upper secondary school students in the classroom of social science education.

Since the 1990s fundamental transformations of international organizations (IOs) such as the World Trade Organization and the African Union have taken place, witnessing a shift from interstate cooperation to the involvement of transnational actors (TNAs), such as non-governmental organizations and social movements.

The Design of International Institutions: Legitimacy, Effectiveness, and Distribution in Global Governance. Why have international institutions over the past decades increasingly opened up to transnational actors, such as NGOs, social movements, and multinational corporations?

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a technological upheaval with the potential to transform human society and is increasingly viewed by states and international organizations as an area of strategic importance.

The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on society raises inherently normative questions, which call for political answers. In democratic societies, the goals and means of AI governance should be identified and decided upon collectively by those who are affected by AI technology, yet what this entails is currently undertheorized.

Does “naming and shaming” by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) lead to environmental protection?

The Performance of International Organizations: Institutional Design and Policy Output in Global Governance.

The Role of Civil Society Actors for the Democratization of Global Governance Institutions: A Function-Sensitive Approach.

The Sámi Parliaments as Representative Bodies: A Comparative Study of the Elections in Sweden and Norway 2013.

Immigrants are severely underrepresented in city halls and national parliaments around the world. In most European countries and even in traditional immigration destinations, the share of immigrants who hold elected office is much lower than their share in the population.

Is it feasible to put global warming to a halt? To reach the climate goals, scholars agree that supply-side mitigation policies must be complemented with demand-side strategies, targeting the consumer end of GHG emissions.

The growing threat of cyber warfare to democratic societies have placed new actors at the frontline: government communicators. This project studies how turning these professionals into intelligence agents redefines and renegotiates the boundaries between the civil and military sectors, including analyses of the democratic implications thereof.

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is an unique approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. They provide a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections.

A central idea in modern democracies is that the coercive powers of the state are legitimate only if they derive from the people. The significance of this idea can be found in the numerous constitutional documents where popular sovereignty is highlighted as key principle, or where “we the people” is declared the ultimate source of the constitutional order.