Maria-Therese GustafssonSenior lecturer, Associate professor
About me
Maria-Therese Gustafsson is Assistant Professor in Political Science and Deputy Study Director at the Department of Political Science.
Maria-Therese Gustafsson’s research revolves around questions related to human rights, environmental justice, climate governance, corporate accountability, public and private governance in global supply chains. She is particularly interested in the consequences of global sustainability governance for marginalized groups in the Global South. Her research primarily relies on qualitative and ethnographic research methods, and she has lived and carried out extensive fieldwork in rural areas of Latin America.
She holds a PhD from Stockholm University and her dissertation was awarded with ‘Högskoleföreningens’ prize for the best dissertation at the Faculty of Social Science, Stockholm University, in 2015. She currently co-leads a research project that focuses on public and private governance initiatives in the supply chains of soy and beef from Brazil to selected European countries (Formas). She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and Cornell University. She is also part of the editorial board of the Oxford University Press book series “Studies in Comparative Energy and Environmental Politics”.
Research
Publications
Monographs
Gustafsson MT (2018) Private Politics and Peasant Mobilization: Mining in Peru. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 243 p.
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
Gustafsson MT, Schilling-Vacaflor A and Lenschow A (forthcoming). The politics of supply chain regulations: Towards foreign corporate accountability in the area of human rights and the environment? Regulation & Governance.
Gustafsson MT, Schilling-Vacaflor A and Lenschow A (forthcoming). Foreign corporate accountability: The contested institutionalization of mandatory due diligence in France and Germany. Regulation & Governance.
Gustafsson MT and Schilling-Vacaflor A (online first). Indigenous peoples and global environmental governance: The opening and closure of participatory spaces. Global Environmental Politics.
Gustafsson MT, Schilling-Vacaflor A (2022). Indigenous peoples and global environmental governance: The opening and closure of participatory spaces. Global Environmental Politics, pp. 1-19.
Gustafsson MT, Rodriguez-Morales E, Dellmuth L (2022). Private adaptation to climate risks: Evidence from the world’s largest mining companies. Climate Risk Management, vol. 35, 100386.
Dellmuth LM, Gustafsson MT (2021). Global adaptation governance: How intergovernmental organizations mainstream climate change adaptation. Climate Policy, pp. 1-16.
Merino R, Gustafsson MT (2021). Localizing the environmental steward norm: The making of conservation and territorial rights in Peru. Environmental Science and Policy.
Kural E, Dellmuth L, Gustafsson MT (2021). International organizations and climate change adaptation: A new dataset for the social scientific study of adaptation, 1990-2017. PLoS ONE, 16(9).
Gustafsson MT, Scurrah, M. (2020). Subnational governance strategies at the extractive frontier: collaboration and conflict in Peru. Territory, Politics, Governance, pp. 1-18.
Gustafsson MT, Merino R, Scurrah M (2020). Domestication of international norms for sustainable resource governance: Elite capture in Peru. Environmental Policy and Governance, 30(5), pp. 227-238.
Dellmuth LM, Gustafsson MT, Kural E (2020). Global adaptation governance: Explaining the governance responses of international organizations to new issue linkages. Environmental Science & Policy, 114, pp. 204-215.
Gustafsson MT, Scurrah M (2019). Strengthening subnational institutions for sustainable development in resource-rich states: Decentralized land-use planning in Peru. World Development, 119, pp. 133-144.
Gustafsson MT, Scurrah M (2019). Unpacking the extractivist state: The role of weak state agencies in promoting institutional change in Peru. The Extractive Industries and Society, 6, pp. 206-214.
Dellmuth LM, Gustafsson MT, Bremberg N, Mobjörk M (2018) Intergovernmental organizations and climate security: advancing the research agenda. WIREs Climate Change. Pp. 1-13.
Gustafsson MT (2017) The Struggles surrounding Ecological and Economic Zoning in Peru. Third World Quarterly 38(5), pp. 1146-1163.
Leifsen E, Gustafsson MT, Guzman-Gallegos MA, Schilling-Vacaflor (2017) New mechanisms of participation in extractive governance: between technologies of governance and resistance work. Third World Quarterly, 38(5), pp. 1043-1057.
Gustafsson MT (2016) Private conflict regulation and the influence of indigenous peasants over natural resources. Latin American Research Review, 51(2), pp. 86-106.
Gustafsson MT (2015) Historic state-society relations and mobilizations surrounding extractive industries: Lessons from Peru. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 36(3), pp. 313-329.
Gustafsson MT (2010). Deepening democracy through public deliberation? Reflections from the Province Huanta in the Peruvian Andes. Iberoamericana – Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 39(1-2), pp. 139-165.
Edited volumes
Leifsen E, Gustafsson MT, Guzman-Gallegos MA, Schilling-Vacaflor (2018) New mechanisms of participation in extractive governance: between technologies of governance and resistance work. Routledge
Gustafsson MT, Johannesson L (2016) Politisk Etnografi – Metoder för Statsvetare. Gleerups.
Gustafsson MT, Uggla F (2016) Pensamiento social sueco sobre América Latina. CLACSO. 312 p.
Policy briefs and reports
Dellmuth LM, Gustafsson MT, Bremberg N, Mobjörk M (2017). IGOs and global climate security challenges: implications for academic research and policymaking. Sipri Fact Sheets.
Gustafsson MT (2016). How do development organisations integrate climate and conflict risks? Experiences and lessons learnt from UK, Germany and the Netherlands. Report commissioned by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Stockholm: Stockholm University. 70 p.
Gustafsson MT (2016). How to integrate climate and conflict risks in development cooperation – Experiences and lessons learnt. Policy brief published by Stockholm University, Utrikespolitiska Institutet & Sipri. 3 p.
Mobjörk M, Gustafsson MT, Sonnsjö H, van Baalen S, Dellmuth L, Bremberg N (2016). Climate-related security risks: Towards an integrated approach. (Report commissioned by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs). SIPRI and Stockholm University. 88 p.
Book chapters, book reviews, and other papers
Schilling-Vacaflor A, Gustafsson MT (2022). Indigenous-led spaces in environmental governance: Implications for self-determined development. In: Postero N, McNeish J, (eds) Routledge Handbook on Indigenous Development.
Gustafsson MT, Schilling-Vacaflor (2020) Skogsskövling och pandemier kan stoppas med bindande lagkrav. Debattartikel publicerad i Omvärlden, 6 december, 2020.
Gustafsson MT, Zetterberg E (2016). Sveriges nya ambassad måste arbeta för att stoppa rovdriften av Perus gruvor. Debattartikel publicerad i Omvärlden, 9 december, 2016.
Gustafsson MT (2013) (Book review) Sustaining Civil Society: Economic Change, Democracy, and the Social Construction of Citizenship in Latin America. By Philip Oxhorn. Comparative Political Studies, 46(5). 5 p.
Research projects
Publications
A selection from Stockholm University publication database
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The politics of supply chain regulations: Towards foreign corporate accountability in the area of human rights and the environment?
2023. Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Andrea Lenschow. Regulation and Governance 17 (4), 853-869
ArticleRead more about The politics of supply chain regulationsIn recent years, binding regulations in the “home states” of corporations have emerged mainly in the Global North with the aim of holding corporations accountable for human rights and environmental impacts throughout their supply chains. However, we still need a better understanding about to what extent such regulations contribute to enhance “foreign corporate accountability (FCA).” This article introduces a special issue that theorizes and empirically investigates foreign accountability dynamics. We do so by advancing an analytical framework that conceptualizes FCA and identify important contextual conditions that help to explain accountability dynamics. Applying this framework, we show that the drafting, implementation, and enforcement of such regulations are highly political processes, wherein competing ideas embedded within unequal actor constellations and institutional environments shape the possibilities to achieve more transformative change. By theorizing and empirically investigating FCA dynamics, we contribute to advance debates about the sustainability governance of global supply chains.
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Foreign corporate accountability: The contested institutionalization of mandatory due diligence in France and Germany
2023. Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Andrea Lenschow. Regulation and Governance 17 (4), 891-908
ArticleRead more about Foreign corporate accountabilityIn the recent past, European states have adopted mandatory due diligence (MDD) laws for holding companies accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains. The institutionalization of the international due diligence norm into domestic legislation has, however, been highly contested. Our contribution analyzes the discursive struggles about the meaning of due diligence that have accompanied the institutionalization of MDD in Germany and France. Based on document analysis and legal analysis of laws and law proposals, we identify a state-centric, a market-based, and a polycentric-governance discourse. These discourses are based on fundamentally different understandings of how the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights should be translated into hard law. By outlining these discourses and comparing the related policy preferences, we contribute with a better understanding of different ways in which MDD is institutionalized, with important consequences for the possibilities to enhance corporate accountability in global supply chains.
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Integrating human rights in the sustainability governance of global supply chains: Exploring the deforestation-land tenure nexus
2024. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Maria-Therese Gustafsson. Environmental Science and Policy 154, 103690
ArticleRead more about Integrating human rights in the sustainability governance of global supply chainsIn contemporary discourse, the need to address urgent environmental issues with a social perspective is widely acknowledged. While theories on policy integration have primarily focused on the national scale, limited attention has been given to the merging of environmental and human rights considerations in global supply chain sustainability governance. Drawing on policy integration theories, we develop an analytical framework for studying Human Rights and Environmental Integration (HREI) within global supply chain governance, specifically examining the deforestation-land tenure nexus in soy supply chains from Brazil to Europe. Our empirical analysis focuses on key policy instruments, including the Soy Moratorium, the Working Group on the Cerrado, the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), and the EU Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR). Drawing from extensive fieldwork in Brazil, we assess the integration of land tenure in these policy instruments, revealing a general weakness in this aspect. Nonetheless, grassroots organizations have played a crucial role in advocating for enhanced HREI, urging the inclusion of land tenure rights in instruments addressing deforestation. Our research highlights that, although global supply chain instruments may not entirely compensate for the deficiencies of domestic policies, they should, at the very least, strive to comprehensively address complex sustainability problems and prevent actions that could worsen existing issues or give rise to new sustainability problems. In conclusion, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the opportunities and structural constraints associated with integrated approaches to interconnected human rights and environmental issues.
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Towards more sustainable global supply chains? Company compliance with new human rights and environmental due diligence laws
2023. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Maria-Therese Gustafsson. Environmental Politics
ArticleRead more about Towards more sustainable global supply chains? Company compliance with new human rights and environmental due diligence lawsBinding regulations have, recently, emerged in the Global North with the aim of holding companies accountable for environmental and/or human rights impacts throughout their supply chains. This article develops and applies an analytical framework to analyze corporate accountability dynamics in global trade, with a focus on the French Duty of Vigilance (DV) law. We analyze how companies in the agri-food sector have complied with the law as well as the emergence of new accountability dynamics. We find that while companies have improved their due diligence systems over time, they enjoy much discretion to interpret their obligations according to a managerial logic and to disclose information selectively. Nevertheless, the DV law has contributed to new accountability dynamics, wherein civil society can use civil liability to pressure companies to comply. Overall, the article advances our understanding of company compliance with new supply chain regulations and the accountability dynamics activated by such rules.
Show all publications by Maria-Therese Gustafsson at Stockholm University