I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

• Democratising sustainability transformations: Assessing the transformative potential of democratic practices in environmental governance

  2022. Jonathan Pickering (et al.). Earth System Governance 11

  Artikel

  Many democracies find it difficult to act swiftly on problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss. This is reflected in long-standing debates in research and policy about whether democratic practices are capable of fostering timely, large-scale transformations towards sustainability. Drawing on an integrative review of scholarly literature from 2011 to early 2021 on sustainability transformations and the democracy-environment nexus, this article synthesises existing research on prospects and pitfalls for democratising sustainability transformations. We advance a new typology for understanding various combinations of democratic/authoritarian practices and of transformations towards/away from sustainability. We then explore the role of democratic practices in accelerating or obstructing five key dimensions of sustainability transformations: institutional, social, economic, technological, and epistemic. Across all dimensions we find substantial evidence that democratic practices can foster transformations towards sustainability, and we conclude by outlining a set of associated policy recommendations.

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• From collaboration to contestation? Perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness in post-Paris climate governance

  2021. Karin Bäckstrand, Jonathan Kuyper, Naghmeh Nasiritousi. Earth System Governance 9

  Artikel

  How do governance arrangements affect perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness amongst non-state actors? This is a pertinent question as the roles of non-state actors have been strengthened in global climate governance. In this paper, we focus on how actors involved in climate governance processes perceive trade-offs and specific factors that risk undermining legitimacy and potential effectiveness of those arrangements. We argue that different rules of procedural legitimacy generate sociological views about whether an institution or its policies will be effective and, in turn, are ‘worthy of support’. To establish this, we engage in an analysis of how nonstate actors have been engaged in the UNFCCC, pre- and post-Paris. We find that efforts to deepen engagement is generating contestation between actors, not fostering collaboration. Focusing on how actors view procedural rules and their potentialities for effective outcomes sheds light on support for those institutions and the development of effective policies.

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• Governing the Climate-Energy Nexus: Institutional Complexity and Its Challenges to Effectiveness and Legitimacy

  2020. .

  Bok (red)

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• International Climate Politics in the Post-Paris Era

  2019. Naghmeh Nasiritousi, Karin Bäckstrand. Climate Policies in the Nordics, 21-61

  Kapitel

  The aim of this article is to assess the efficacy of the Paris Agreement to generate policies and incentivize actions that can contribute to halt climate change significantly. The article shows that the agreement in many ways represents a significant shift in global climate politics. By making domestically driven climate policy central to the treaty, the Paris Agreement avoids some of the reasons for multilateral gridlock that permeated global climate policy for decades. The biggest challenge for state and non-state actors is to increase ambition in climate commitments. The article concludes with recommendations on how to accelerate climate action.

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• The Road to Paris: Contending Climate Governance Discourses in the Post-Copenhagen Era

  2019. Karin Bäckstrand, Eva Lövbrand. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 21 (5), 519-532

  Artikel

  In this paper, we advance discourse analysis to interpret how the state and direction of climate governance is imagined or interpreted by the multitude of actors present at UN climate conferences. We approach the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as active political sites that project ideas, assumptions and standards for the conduct of global politics. This paper examines to what extent the discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism identified by Backstrand and Lovbrand [(2006). Planting trees to mitigate climate change. Contested discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism. Global Environmental Politics, 6(1), 51-71; Backstrand, K., & Lovbrand, E. (2007). Climate governance beyond 2012. Competing discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism. In M. Pettenger (Ed.), The social construction of climate change. Ashgate] a decade ago still inform how climate governance is imagined and enacted in the post-Copenhagen era. After reviewing scholarship on climate governance and International Relations, we introduce our discursive framework and systematically compare three contending discourses of climate governance articulated at COP 17 in Durban (2011), COP 19 in Warsaw (2013) and COP 20 in Lima (2014). We end by discussing whether the discursive struggles played out at UN climate conferences represent a shift in the ways in which climate governance was imagined and enacted on the road to Paris, and to what extent our findings may help to extend scholarship in this field.

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• Legitimacy in global governance: sources, processes, and consequences

  2018. .

  Bok (red)

  Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume: to develop an agenda for systematic and comparative research on legitimacy in global governance. In complementary fashion, the chapters address different aspects of the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. The volume makes four specific contributions. First, it argues for a sociological approach to legitimacy, centered on perceptions of legitimate global governance among affected audiences. Second, it moves beyond the traditional focus on states as the principal audience for legitimacy in global governance and considers a full spectrum of actors from governments to citizens. Third, it advocates a comparative approach to the study of legitimacy in global governance, and suggests strategies for comparison across institutions, issue areas, countries, societal groups, and time. Fourth, the volume offers the most comprehensive treatment so far of the sociological legitimacy of global governance, covering three broad analytical themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

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• Institutional Accountability of Nonstate Actors in the UNFCCC: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

  2017. Jonathan Kuyper, Karin Bäckstrand, Heike Schroeder. Review of Policy Research 34 (1), 88-109

  Artikel

  How are nonstate actors within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held to account? In this article, we introduce the concept of institutional accountability to complement the wider literature(s) on accountability in climate governance. Within institutional frameworks, actors employ rules, norms, and procedures to demand justifications from one another. In light of those justifications, actors then use exit, voice, or loyalty to positively or negatively sanction each other. To depict the dynamics of institutional accountability, we analyze the role of nonstate actors in the nine constituency groups of the UNFCCC. We outline the constituency structure and the population of observer organizations. We then identify examples where nonstate actors employed institutional rules in tandem with exit, voice, or loyalty to foster accountability. In making this analysis we draw upon three years of on-site participation at UNFCCC meetings, document analysis, and more than 40 semistructured interviews with state and nonstate actors. We conclude by discussing the scope and conditions under which institutional accountability may occur in other issue areas of global governance.

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• Accountability and Representation: Nonstate Actors in UN Climate Diplomacy

  2016. Jonathan W. Kuyper, Karin Bäckstrand. Global Environmental Politics 16 (2), 61-81

  Artikel

  Observer organizations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are clustered into nine constituency groups. Each constituency has a focal point (representative) to mediate between the Secretariat and the 1800 NGOs admitted during each Conference of the Parties meeting by collating information, coordinating interactions, offering logistical support, and providing collective representation. Drawing upon a series of interviews with constituency groups and other qualitative data, we explore how the focal point of each constituency group remains accountable to the observer organizations he or she represents. We make two major contributions. First, we map the accountability mechanisms that exist between the observer organizations and focal points in each constituency. Second, we argue that variation in the usage of accountability mechanisms across constituencies corresponds to the existence of parallel bodies operating outside the UNFCCC. This article speaks to broader issues of accountability and representation in global climate governance.

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• The democratic legitimacy of orchestration: the UNFCCC, non-state actors, and transnational climate governance

  2017. Karin Bäckstrand, Jonathan W. Kuyper. Environmental Politics 26 (4), 764-788

  Artikel

  Is orchestration democratically legitimate? On one hand, debates concerning the legitimacy and democratic deficits of international politics continue unabated. On the other, the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has progressively engaged in processes of orchestration culminating in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Scholarship on orchestration has almost exclusively focused on how to ensure effectiveness while excluding normative questions. This lacuna is addressed by arguing that orchestration should be assessed according to its democratic credentials. The promises and pitfalls of orchestration can be usefully analyzed by applying a set of democratic values: participation, deliberation, accountability, and transparency. Two major orchestration efforts by the UNFCCC both pre- and post-Paris are shown to have substantive democratic shortfalls, not least with regard to participation and accountability. Ways of strengthening the democratic legitimacy of orchestration are identified.

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• Normative arguments for non-state actor participation in international policymaking processes: Functionalism, neocorporatism or democratic pluralism?

  2016. Naghmeh Nasiritousi, Mattias Hjerpe, Karin Bäckstrand. European Journal of International Relations 22 (4), 920-943

  Artikel

  The participation of non-state actors in multilateral institutions is often portrayed as one way of decreasing the perceived legitimacy deficit in global governance. The literature on non-state actors has identified several ways in which these actors can enhance the legitimacy of intergovernmental organisations and global governance arrangements. Three partially competing normative arguments, or rationales, for the inclusion of non-state actors in international policymaking functionalism, neocorporatism and democratic pluralism have been identified. Whereas functionalism highlights the contribution of non-state actors to output legitimacy in terms of expertise, neocorporatism emphasises the inclusion of affected interests, and democratic pluralism claims that non-state actors increase input legitimacy through procedural values. These three normative arguments thus offer different understandings of the motives for the inclusion and representation of non-state actors in international negotiations and diplomacy. Through a single case study of United Nations climate diplomacy, we analyse the extent to which the three rationales for non-state actor inclusion are found in views held by state and non-state actors participating in the annual United Nations climate change conferences. Our results show that different actor groups place varying degrees of emphasis on the different rationales for non-state actor inclusion, even though the neocorporatist rationale remains most favoured overall. We discuss the implications of our findings for the democratic legitimacy of increasing participation of non-state actors in intergovernmental affairs and recent trends in the participation of non-state actors in the international climate change policymaking process.

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