Quantitative methods – bachelor and master level.

Thesis supervision

Environmental politics

Sanna Lundquist's research interests are environmental politics, environmental economics, the green economy.

Research project

My reserach interests include the emergence of the green economy, emissions decoupling, environmental protest events, political parties and policy outcomes.  

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Governing the Green Economy Transition: Public Opinion, Political Parties, and Environmental Outcomes

  2023. Sanna Lundquist.

  Thesis (Doc)

  The green economy presents an attractive framework for how economic growth can continue without harming the environment and promises to deliver more resource efficient, less carbon intensive, less environmentally damaging, and more socially inclusive societies. Over the past fifteen years, the idea of a green economy transition as a means to reconcile economic, environmental and social goals has gained traction among a wide range of policy-making organizations and is incorporated in policy agendas at national and global scales. Despite this, research has yet to produce a systematic and careful assessment of the evidence of a green economy transition. This dissertation lays down the first building blocks of a theoretical, empirical and methodological framework that can be used to assess the green economy transition. Taking on an interdisciplinary approach, the dissertation identifies four key objectives of a green economy; market transformation, political management, individual environmental values and attitudes and private sector environmental governance. These four objectives are quantified into multiple indicators and used to provide a systematic and comparative analysis of the causes and drivers of a green economy transition. The overall conclusions of this dissertation are threefold. First, there is empirical evidence of a green economy transition and countries are making progress towards greening growth. Second, it seems possible for political actors to govern the green economy transition and push the economy in the desired direction. Third, a green economy transition requires a more pronounced role of the general public and private market actors. 

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• Explaining events of strong decoupling from CO₂ and NO_x emissions in the OECD 1994–2016

  2021. Sanna Lundquist. Science of the Total Environment 793

  Article

  Decoupling economic growth from emissions is vital to achieve the environmental targets postulated by the Paris agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper analyzes a set of factors that have the potential to increase the rate of emissions decoupling in 35 OECD countries 1994–2016. It takes on an encompassing approach focusing on emissions decoupling from two pollutant types carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrogen oxide (NO_x) as well as emissions decoupling from both production-and consumption-based CO₂ emissions. Drawing on existing research six key driving factors of emissions decoupling are derived and empirically tested. The paper contributes theoretically by widening the understanding of potential drivers of decoupling, as the six derived factors are not generally analyzed in conjunction. The paper is methodologically innovative in its use of event history models to analyze the significance of the explanatory factors in increasing the rate of emissions decoupling.

  The paper results in three main findings. One the paper provide empirical evidence of emissions decoupling across all analyzed countries and across all pollutant measures. Two, the paper shows that countries experience recurring instances of decoupling. Third, factors related to green technologies can increase the rate of decoupling both for different emission types and for emissions accounted for as production-and consumption-based.

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• Do Parties Matter for Environmental Policy Stringency? Exploring the Program-to-Policy Link for Environmental Issues in 28 Countries 1990-2015

  2022. Sanna Lundquist. Political Studies

  Article

  Political parties are crucial in crafting effective national climate policies in democratic states. At the same time, there is a practical and academic debate of whether political parties matter for policy output. This article speaks to this debate by investigating the link between what parties say and what parties do with respect to environmental issues. More concretely, it analyzes whether there is a connection between the degree of environmentalism expressed in parties' electoral manifestos and national environmental policy output. Theoretically, the article draws on existing research on program-to-policy linkages in general and for environmental issues specifically to argue that saliency of environmentalism in party manifestos shapes more stringent environmental policies. This argument is empirically tested by combining data on policy stringency with data on manifesto contents for 28 countries for the period 1990-2015. The findings corroborate the main hypothesis, which has implications for understanding the overall potential for political parties to structure national environmental politics. The article concludes by sketching broader implications for research on parties' ability to shape national environmental policy across political systems, and across partisan ideologies.

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Show all publications by Sanna Lundquist at Stockholm University