Annica Kronsell

• Professor (Ph.D.) Political Science
• Professor (Full) at University of Gothenburg

This article explores the link between gender representation and climate policy-making in Scandinavia. We ask to what extent equal descriptive representation (critical mass) results in substantive representation (critical acts). Our study shows that women and men are equally represented in administrative and political units involved in climate poli...

Investigations of the interconnectedness of climate change with human societies require profound analysis of relations among humans and between humans and nature, and the integration of insights from various academic fields. An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. An intersectional analysis of climate...

Denna bok handlar om hur samhället kan ställas om till nollutsläpp – vilka åtgärder och styrningsutmaningar som är förknippade med en sådan övergång och vilka krav det ställer på den samhälleliga styrningen. Den har författats inom ramen för forsk¬ningsprogrammet LETS 2050 (www.lets2050.se) och är i stora delar en syntes av våra resultat. LETS, Gov...

In Europe, climate change has largely been governed through the logic of ecological modernisation with a preference for market and growth mechanisms, efficiency, technical solutions and innovation. This has several gender effects: it has maintained the exclusion of women from climate governance; and led to the invisibility of gender and a denied de...

Climate institutions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with its expert panel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the European Union, as well as national and local authorities in various sectors (such as transport, industry, energy, and agriculture), play a central role in developing an...

This paper aims to analyse and further capture nuances of gender representation in local political decision-making bodies, focusing on implications for transport policy. Since gender is highly relevant for both attitudes towards transport policy as well as political votes, data on the gender and political colour of executives (members of presidiums...

Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Devel...

The great hopes in Brussels that a circular bioeconomy will help bridge the growing divide between urban and rural areas and allow the hinterlands to prosper from ‘green growth’ are addressed in this article, which reflects on insights from three Nordic case studies of brown, green and blue biomass use at different levels of technology readiness. A...

Which form of governance is required to bridge tensions that stem from the urgent need of climate change adaptation (CCA) on the one hand, and the imperative of upholding peace and social stability in vulnerable areas on the other? This article proposes transformative governance as a framework and methodology for addressing this question. It recogn...

This paper explores conceptualisations of households in sustainability transitions. Existing literature in the field has only engaged with households in a limited and fragmented way, despite the role of households in resource use, shaping social innovation and as a target of environmental policies. The paper asks: how are households conceptualised...

Governing bodies at different levels are authoritative institutions and civil servants/policy-makers are key actors in realizing global and national climate objectives. They have largely failed to create effective, legitimate, democratic, and just policies. This is problematic in light of research that views the climate transition as a social and b...

The complexities and scope of environmental issues have not only outpaced the capacities and responsiveness of traditional political actors but also generated new innovations, constituencies, and approaches to governing environmental problems. In response, comparative environmental politics (CEP) has emerged as a vibrant and growing field of schola...

This book explores how climate institutions in industrialized countries work to further the recognition of social differences and integrate this understanding in climate policy making. With contributions from a range of expert scholars in the field, this volume investigates policy-making in climate institutions from the perspective of power as it...

Climate change effects, views and approaches vary based on geographical location, class, gender, age and other climate related social factors. It is thus relevant to explore how various government bodies/authorities involved in dealing with climate change represent and act on social difference across diverse societies. This article performs a disco...

This article aims to enable a conversation between cosmopolitan thought, with focus on individual ethical experiences and reflections, and research on embodied military experiences. While we derive our ethical reasoning from cosmopolitanism, we concede that it lacks sensitivity to individuals’ other-regarding reflections and acts. Moreover, it does...

Gender identities are relevant for sustainable transport. By analyzing the synergies between gender inequality (as a problem), and lack of sustainability (another problem), there is a potential to create an understanding of how these problems are linked. Our aim is to better understand how gendered norms find expression in transport policy and plan...

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has been argued as part of the solution to prevalent transport problems. However, progress from pilots to large-scale implementation has hitherto been slow. The aim of the research reported in this paper was to empirically and in-depth investigate how, and to what extent, different factors affect the development and imp...

In the light of increasing urban challenges, municipalities are developing and advancing new forms of governing. One such example is 'urban experimentation', a process where city-based innovation processes are initiated to test solutions that-if deemed successful-are intended to be scaled up with the ambition to leverage a broader urban sustainabil...

There are large discrepancies in the transport sector along gender lines in travel patterns and means of transportation used, but also in attitudes and norms among citizens, planners and decision-makers, with women generally more positive towards measures involving the lowering CO2 emissions. At the same time, the number of women involved in transp...

This article focuses on the role of actor relations in advancing climate policymaking and argues that attempts to understand decisions to decarbonise in a green state should explore the institutional conditions for policymaking. The article explores the climate policy model in Sweden in terms of the societal actors included in the policy process, t...

The analytical distinction between critical and problem-solving research is useful. At the onset of research, the latter takes the world as it is while the former questions it. Yet, in striving to integrate social and natural dimensions of sustainability such a distinction may surface as a methodological obstacle. We illustrate how combining critic...

A growing number of states including Canada, Norway and Sweden have adopted gender and feminist-informed approaches to their foreign and security policies. The overarching aim of this article is to advance a theoretical framework that can enable a thoroughgoing study of these developments. Through a feminist lens, we theorise feminist foreign polic...

This paper synthesizes evidence from Workshop 7 ‘The “uberisation” of public transport and mobility as a service (MaaS): implications for future mainstream public transport’ of the 15th International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport. Workshop 7 was specifically concerned with the way in which the widespread adopti...

The large share of carbon emitted by energy-intensive industries in the extraction and processing of basic materials must be limited to decarbonise society and the economy. Ways in which the state can govern industrial decarbonisation and contributes to green state theory are explored by addressing a largely ignored issue: the green state’s industr...

Innovations in urban governance such as Urban Living Labs (ULL) are expected to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable and climate-resilient cities. This article reviews different ULL across Europe and explores the role and potential capacity of municipalities in the development of and/or facilitation of ULL as a form of experimental go...

Climate change can be violent, expressed through immediate weather events, such as floods and storms, and slower, long term violence, such as droughts that impact women’s everyday lives and livelihoods and are exacerbated by other pressures and conflicts. However, climate change has not been explicitly connected to the UN women, peace, and security...

With a continued global urbanisation trend and increasing demand for transportation with consequences in terms of, for example, congestion, emissions, and noise, urban mobility is a major challenge for the future. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has been argued as part of the solution by contributing to reducing the use of private cars and increasing...

Feminist security studies (FFS) scholarship advocates the analysis of women’s war experiences and narratives to understand conflict and military intervention. Here we add a non-great power focus to FFS debates on the gendered discourses of military interventionism. We zoom in on Danish and Swedish women soldiers’ reflections on their involvement in...

Cities are growing expansively as an increasing population travels to work, school, and leisure activities. It is predicted that the need for transportation will rise, resulting in an even further increase in emissions, noise, congestion and in overloaded infrastructures. Different schemes have therefore been introduced in order to support a shift...

Intersectionality originates in feminist critical theory as a perspective for analyzing how categories of difference – such as gender, class, race and age – are co-constructed and embedded in dynamic relations of power. In a previous article, we discussed how intersectionality can be used as an analytical tool for research on climate change, and sk...

Zusammenfassung Abels und Mushaben (2012) argumentieren, dass in der Europaischen Union ein doppeltes Demokratiedefizit bezogen auf Geschlecht existiert: Frauen seien in den EU-Institutionen unterreprasentiert und der EU-Politik fehle es insgesamt an einer Geschlechterperspektive. Dieser Beitrag tragt mit einem spezifischen Fokus auf Klimapolitik z...

Institutional conditions for integrated mobility services: an analysis of enabling and constraining factors. Conference presentation.

Urban Living Labs (ULL) are advanced as an explicit form of intervention delivering sustainability goals for cities. Established at the boundaries between research, innovation and policy, ULL are intended to design, demonstrate and learn about the effects of urban interventions in real time. While rapidly growing as an empirical phenomenon, our und...

This article explores whether women can become the change agents for a sustainable transport sector and how such a change can be accomplished through transport policy. Based on the Swedish case, women still on average have transportation behaviour with lower environmental impact than men have; women also tend to have stronger preferences for improv...

Historic differences in livelihoods, work roles and the access to resources lead to differences in how women and men are exposed to and impacted by climate change. Policymakers and civil society groups have come to realize that gender matters in the governance of climate issues and there is an emerging scholarship in this field. However, the attent...

This article advances feminist analysis in the study of European integration through a focus on gender power in relation to masculinity constructs. It takes issue with the fact that gender studies tend to equate gender with women. It sketches a feminist contribution to integration theory, where the EU is perceived as gender regimes at multiple leve...

This innovative book is one of the first to conduct a systematic comprehensive analysis of the ideals and practices of the evolving green state. It draws on elements of political theory, feminist theory, post-structuralism, governance and institutional theory to conceptualise the green state and advances thinking on how to understand its emergence...

Research on the European Union over the past few years has been strongly implicated in the crises that currently grip Europe with a failure to ask the pertinent questions as well as a perceived weakness in the methods and evidence used by researchers providing the basis for these allegations. This volume moves the study of EU research strategies be...

This article explores the European Union (EU)’s Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) through a framework based on feminist institutional theory that highlights the durability in the dynamics of gender relations. Path dependency based on historic features of military institutions—a strict sex division based on “gender war roles”—has influenced the dev...

This article explores the European Union (EU)’s Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) through a framework based on feminist institutional theory that highlights the durability in the dynamics of gender relations. Path dependency based on historic features of military institutions—a strict sex division based on “gender war roles”—has influenced the dev...

Single policy studies are the most common form of EU research. They are widely used to understand the role of the EU in a wide variety of sectors, together with its development over time, and often offer public policy prescriptions. The main aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance of single policy studies in EU research and give examples of...

This paper explore the possibilities for climate and sustainability transitions through a focus on transportation issues. Based on Sweden as a case study, data shows that women´s transportation behaviour has lower environmental impact than men´s and also women tend to have stronger preferences for measures improvingsoftíssues such as e.g. sustainab...

This article explores the link between gender representation and climate policy-making in Scandinavia. We ask to what extent equal descriptive representation (critical mass) results in substantive representation (critical acts). Our study shows that women and men are equally represented in administrative and political units involved in climate poli...

Cities are crucial to mitigating climate change and can serve as sites for innovations, providing examples of ways to conduct effective politics in transport, energy and land-use. What does it take to become a model for climate politics? This article argues that a few innovative measures will not suffice. A common vision based on broad legitimacy i...

This article demonstrates how gender is relevant to governance of a transition to a low-carbon economy. It does this through insights derived from gender and transition studies in combination, applied and illustrated through a study of climate governance in Sweden. The approach is constructive and uses as central concepts: transition arenas, niches...

Cities are crucial to mitigating climate change and can serve as sites for innovations, providing examples of ways to conduct effective politics in transport, energy and land-use. What does it take to become a model for climate politics? This article argues that a few innovative measures will not suffice. A common vision based on broad legitimacy i...

Investigations of the interconnectedness of climate change with human societies require profound analysis of relations among humans and between humans and nature, and the integration of insights from various academic fields. An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. An intersectional analysis of climate...

This book explores the post-national defense and its gender implications. A characteristic of the post-national defense is that less attention is paid to the defense of the territory and more to the security situation outside its borders, often in cooperation with other states. It is exemplified with Sweden and the EU as empirical cases. The main r...

Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense. Militarism and Peacekeeping. - Puts UN SCR 1325 into a larger conversation about human security, the post-national defense and militaries doing peacekeeping activities - Based on extensive case study material, much of which has never been published in English - Shows that increasing gender parity in the mil...

This volume is a holistic assessment of six decades of European integration as seen through a gender lens. It features the insights of scholars from nine countries, who analyze new and old barriers to gender equality in all realms of EU activity. The first part of the volume offers a critique of mainstream integration theories and situates women ac...

It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative...

Can new modes of governance, such as public–private partnerships, stakeholder consultations and networks, promote effective environmental policy performance as well as increased deliberative and participatory quality? This book argues that in academic inquiry and policy practice there has been a deliberative turn, manifested in a revitalized intere...

In this article we test current knowledge about policy implementation in multilevel governance systems and focus on the debated case of transport biofuels (EU Directive 2003/30/EC). We probe a set of hypotheses in a qualitative comparative analysis, offering a systematic comparison of 10 member states between 2003 and 2006. The findings show that i...

The ‘old’ forms of governance have been criticized for being neither sufficiently democratic nor effective. The popularity of ‘new’ modes of governance includes the embracing of values — integral to democratic processes — such as legitimacy, public accountability and trust. By relating parts of this ‘old‐vs.‐new’ distinction to March and Olsen’s di...

Introduction Institutions such as the military and state defense organization are central to the field of international relations. Simultaneously, they represent and reify specific gender relations. This chapter centers on methodological issues for feminist researchers interested in these institutions. They are institutions of hegemonic masculinity...

Conscription is seen as forming a site and an issue-area around which different identities are struggled over and core political relations established in a security-related context. The unravelling of conscription thus unavoidably pertains to a set of essential ideational issues and has significance far beyond the military sphere. The contributors...

The European integration process both affirms and challenges gender relations in Europe. Yet integration theories have contributed little to understanding gender dynamics. The article presents a feminist critique of integration theories and argues that they have failed to look at how gender relations impact the ‘driving forces' of European integrat...

Vital knowledge about gender relations can be gained through the study of military and defense organizations. Such institutions of hegemonic masculinity tend to represent and reify specific notions of masculinity in ways that make it the norm. The article suggests that such institutions can be approached through feminist methodology, for example, b...

The continuing development of the European Union (EU) is transforming policy and politics in its member countries, and possibly in an even larger number of potential members. This book offers a detailed investigation of the Europeanization of national environmental policy in ten western European countries since 1970. By blending state-of-the-art th...

n a forthcoming book, Christine Ingebritsen challenges the view that small states lack power in international relations by pointing to the Scandinavian countries' influence on the setting of international norms. For example, since the early 1970s, Sweden has been particularly active in pushing for environmental norms in various international set- t...

More women are receiving advanced degrees and ascending to the ranks of deans, provosts, and presidents, but despite gains in advancing gender equality, efforts at true empowerment are still met with significant resistance within academia. The contributors to this collection are committed to promoting the issue of gender and empowering women in hig...

In this article, we turn first to a brief discussion of feminist contributions in the field of security, defense, and collective identity, and then argue that Swedish nationalism is tied to a particular form of collective identity formation through the practice of conscription. Drawing on Elshtain's notions of `just warriors' and `beautiful souls',...

The Emergence of Ecological Modernisation offers a wealth of empirical research material from an international perspective, bringing together previously scattered sources for the first time. It addresses a series of theoretical issues that are of key contemporary relevance, such as the relationship between ecological modernisation and sustainable d...