Master level:

• ’Qualitative Methods’
• ’Advanced Qualitative Methods’

Petersson conducts interdisciplinary research with a focus on questions related to global environmental governance, including around the role of non-state actors, public-private partnerships, as well as the effectiveness of international organizations.

 

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Finding synergies and trade-offs when linking biodiversity and climate change through cooperative initiatives

  2023. Oscar Widerberg (et al.). Global Policy 14 (1), 157-161

  Article

  The causes and consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change are deeply intertwined. Hundreds of existing cooperative initiatives—gathering thousands of states, regions, cities, companies, civil society organisations and communities—are potentially bending the curve on biodiversity loss and tackling climate change simultaneously. More research is needed to understand if, how and under what conditions cooperative initiatives are delivering on their promises and importantly how they can contribute to both ‘biodiversity positive outcomes’ and ‘net-zero emissions’ at the same time.

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• The potential of international cooperative initiatives to address key challenges of protected areas

  2022. Katarzyna Negacz (et al.). Environmental Science and Policy 136, 620-631

  Article

  Protected areas are frequently used as an important governance approach for biodiversity conservation. Even though the total area of protected areas has increased over time, the coverage, quality of management and effectiveness of these areas are still suboptimal. A large body of literature identifies four main challenges that limit the effectiveness of protected areas: lack of stakeholder participation, insufficient organisational capacity to enforce rules, poor integration across social and ecological goals, and underdeveloped accountability mechanisms for assessing management procedures. To address these challenges, scholars and policymakers increasingly debate how to foster an integrated, inclusive, and transparent “whole of society” approach to conservation. We contribute to this debate by examining the role of international cooperative initiatives (ICIs), involving non-state and subnational actors operating across national borders to steer society towards a common goal. We identify 20 ICIs that work on protected areas and analyse their potential to address the four main challenges identified in protected areas, by examining their actor constellation, governance functions, goal alignment, and monitoring and reporting mechanisms. We find that ICIs working on protected areas have the potential to directly address challenges in protected areas related to lack of capacity and accountability mechanisms, and indirectly address challenges related to lack of participation and integration across goals. We discuss these findings in relation to scholarly debates in the global environmental governance and protected areas literature respectively, as well as, to policy debates over the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

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• Transparency in global fisheries governance: The role of non-governmental organizations

  2022. Matilda T. Petersson. Marine Policy 136

  Article

  Transparency is generally believed to enhance the capacity of international organizations to solve complex environmental problems. Civil society actors, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representing non-profit public interests, are often considered to be critical components and drivers of transparency. This article focuses on the role of NGOs in relation to transparency in global fisheries governance, by considering their requests for transparency across twelve Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs). It takes a descriptive approach and considers the requests made by NGOs in their policy statements submitted to RFMO Commission meetings. It categorizes these requests across three overarching dimensions of transparency: public participation (1), access to information (2), and access to outcomes (3). It also considers the concerns expressed by NGOs over barriers to transparency. The article ends by discussing the broader implications of these findings in relation to ongoing debates on transparency and effectiveness.

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• Dataset on non-state actor participation in regional fisheries management organizations

  2021. Lisa M. Dellmuth (et al.). Data in Brief 34

  Article

  In this article, we present and describe a new dataset of non-state actor participation in seven regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs). The dataset contains institutional, economic and ecological variables relevant for non-state actor participation in RFMOs and for RFMO effectiveness. To code non-state actor participation and institutional factors, we quantify information from publicly available RFMO reports as well as data from the Policy IV dataset. We pair these data with existing datasets on ecological and economic factors from the RAM Legacy and the Sea Around Us databases. This article describes the data collection process and the coded variables in detail.

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• Empowering NGOs? Long-term effects of ecological and institutional change on regional fisheries management organizations

  2020. Lisa M. Dellmuth (et al.). Global Environmental Change 65

  Article

  The participation of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in regional fisheries management organizations has inspired optimism among many observers and researchers about increasing the effectiveness of these regional organizations in managing highly migratory and straddling fish stocks sustainably. Others claim that the attendance of ENGOs in meetings of regional fisheries management organizations as accredited observers or as part of member state or cooperating non-member state delegations, could make decision-making complex, long, and inefficient. More generally, NGO participation has attracted broad scholarly interest in the study of interest groups and transnational advocacy in political science. Yet, we know little about the determinants of ENGO participation in meetings of regional fisheries management organizations in the first place. To fill this gap, this article develops a theoretical framework conceptualizing ENGO participation and developing expectations about how ecological and institutional change shapes ENGO participation. The framework deals with structural determinants of ENGO participation, as existing literature primarily has been preoccupied with the study of actor-specific explanations of specific NGOs' impact in specific political processes. By contrast, we examine how ecological change - such as target fish stock health and biomass status - and institutional change - such as financial resources, membership composition of regional fisheries management organizations and participation by other non-state actors, such as experts and fishing industry representatives - shape ENGO participation. We empirically explore this framework in the context of seven regional fisheries management organizations. A dataset comprising yearly fish stock-level data on participation, institutional, and ecological factors, for 1980-2014, was compiled for our quantitative inquiry into the determinants of ENGO participation. We find robust evidence that institutional change shapes ENGO participation, but not ecological factors related to target fish stock health. We discuss our findings against the backdrop of ongoing debates about NGOs in political science, and spell out broader implications for future research on NGOs in regional fisheries management organizations.

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• Patterns and trends in non-state actor participation in regional fisheries management organizations

  2019. Matilda Tove Petersson (et al.). Marine Policy 104, 146-156

  Article

  Non-state actors (NSAs) have proliferated in number and are increasingly acknowledged to matter for global governance of natural resources. This has generated considerable scholarly interest, but there is surprisingly little systematic knowledge about patterns and trends of NSA participation in global fisheries institutions. This article addresses this gap by studying NSA populations, considering more than 500 actors attending commission meetings, in the five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (tuna RFMOs) between 2004 and 2011. It constructs a theoretical framework drawing on previous insights from population ecology and global governance literature. The articles finds that multiple NSAs participate in tuna RFMOs, but there is no general trend towards increasing proportions of NSAs compared to state participants. Representational diversity was found to be relatively limited, as NSA participants were predominately representing industry interests and from high income countries. Volatility of NSAs varied across RFMOs, but it was clear that industry representatives were frequently repeat participants, while civil society organizations (CSOs) participated only in occasional meetings. Finally, industry representatives were found to participate as part of member state delegations, while CSOs generally participated as observers. The article discusses the implications of the variation in NSA populations across RFMOs, and over time, and in relation to important concerns in the broader scholarly debates on access, influence, representation, and effectiveness in global environmental governance.

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• Making waves: A study of the patterns and consequences of non-state actor participation in global fisheries governance

  2020. Matilda Petersson.

  Thesis (Doc)

  States have established regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to manage transboundary fish stocks. However, the effectiveness of these bodies has been questioned. Problems with overfishing, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and bycatch remain persistent and difficult to solve. In addition to states however, non-state actors (NSAs) also matter for the governance capacity to sustainably manage transboundary fish stocks. These actors include both non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, business associations, consultancies, and private research organizations. They represent diverse interests and pursue different goals in global governance. They are known to participate in meetings of international organizations and the United Nations, and to form transnational partnerships (together with other actors) to address transboundary environmental problems. However, their participation within global fisheries governance and the consequences of that participation for political outcomes achieved, for example by RFMOs, is not well understood. 

  I attempt to fill this gap, by addressing two overarching research questions. First: how and why do non-state actors participate in global fisheries governance, and second: how (and under what conditions) does the participation of these actors shape RFMOs’ effectiveness? In order to analyze the participation and consequences of NSAs, I construct a theoretical framework combining insights from international relations literature on NSAs, transnational partnerships, and international regimes, and from the comparative politics literature on interest groups.

  The thesis presents four papers. Paper I studies the conditions for NGO participation across seven RFMOs. It finds that NGO participation is shaped by the RFMOs’ own institutional capacity and competitive pressures from other NSAs from research organizations, but not by changes in target fish stock health. Paper II studies the variation in advocacy strategies used by transnational partnerships to shape IUU fishing policy. It finds that partnerships mainly use inside and service provision strategies, but rarely outside strategies. The variation in strategies is shaped by changes in political opportunity structures, i.e., by an increasingly complex global institutional landscape as well as increasing issue complexity and salience. Paper III focuses on the roles of NGOs in relation to transparency across twelve RFMOs. It finds that NGOs have made repeated requests for procedural transparency, and that several requests have received responses from member states, such as notably, the adoption of observer accreditation rules. NGOs also face several barriers to transparency, as they sometimes are hindered from attending certain sessions and from actively engaging in discussions. These barriers limit the ability of NGOs to develop policy-specific advice and to perform accountability functions, with potential implications for RFMO effectiveness. Paper IV explores the influence of NGOs on the effectiveness of RFMOs to manage sharks, by considering two indictors, i.e., changes in policy outputs and to key actor positions. Strategic venue shopping is found to be an important mechanism for NGOs’ ability to influence RFMO effectiveness. Taken together, the thesis contributes to scholarly debates about the participation and influence of NSAs in sustainability science and international relations literature, and related policy debates about the prospects for achieving sustainable fisheries through an inclusive and ecosystem approach to management.

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• Transnational partnerships' strategies in global fisheries governance

  2019. Matilda Tove Petersson. Interest Groups & Advocacy 8 (3), 460-479

  Article

  This paper explores the role of transnational partnerships within a transboundary policy problem, namely illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing. It focuses on an understudied aspect in the partnership literature, namely 'how and why do partnerships engage in advocacy'? The article theorizes and empirically explores the variation in strategies used by transnational partnerships to shape IUU policy development and implementation, drawing on theories from comparative politics and international relations. The paper finds that transnational partnerships often combine inside strategies with service provision, but that they rarely use outside strategies, and analyzes this variation in strategies by looking at changes in issues complexity, institutional complexity, and salience for state concerning IUU fishing policy. The paper ends by discussing the implication of these findings in relation to the previous literature on interest groups in comparative politics and on international non-governmental organizations and transnational partnerships in international relations.

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• The role of NGOs in negotiating the use of biodiversity in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction

  2017. Robert Blasiak (et al.). Marine Policy 81, 1-8

  Article

  In 2004, the UN General Assembly resolved to establish a working group to consider issues pertaining to the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). The group met nine times between 2006 and 2015 before concluding its mandate by recommending the development of an international legally binding instrument on BBNJ under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Based on in-depth interviews with working group participants, this research examines how NGOs contributed to the working group process. Respondents from government delegations highlighted the usefulness of workshops and side events convened by NGOs, and the role of NGOs in bringing experts on technical issues particularly marine genetic resources and the sharing of benefits into the BBNJ negotiations. Respondents from both NGOs and government delegations emphasized the importance of fostering personal relationships in order to ensure a steady and constructive information flow. Social media efforts by NGOs were considered by some government representatives to have occasionally hampered open discussion, although they noted that conditions have improved. The lengthy working group process was marked by substantial fluctuation in participation, particularly within government delegations from developing states. Of 1523 individuals who participated in at least one of the working group meetings, only 45 attended more than half of the meetings, and 80% of these were representing NGOs or highly industrialized countries. Respondents felt that this comparatively small number of individuals provided a source of continuity that was crucial for moving the discussions forward.

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Show all publications by Matilda Petersson at Stockholm University