Kacper Szulecki

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• Dr. rer. soc.
• Professor at Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

‘Energy democracy’ epitomizes hopes in energy transformation, but remains under-defined, a political buzzword rather than a real concept. After presenting its activist roots and mapping its usage, ‘energy democracy’ is positioned in relation to similar normatively derived concepts: environmental, climate, and energy justice, and environmental democ...

This edited collection highlights the different meanings that have been attached to the notion of energy security and how it is taken to refer to different objects. Official policy definitions of energy security are broadly similar across countries and emphasize the reliability and affordability of access to sufficient energy resources for a commun...

This monograph traces the history of the dissident as a transnational phenomenon, exploring Soviet dissidents in Communist Central Europe from the mid-1960s until 1989. It argues that our understanding of the transnational activist would not be what it is today without the input of Central European oppositionists and ties the term to the global eme...

The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe was not only a human and ecological disaster, but also a political-ideological one, severely discrediting Soviet governance and galvanizing dissidents in the Eastern Bloc. In the case of Poland, what began as isolated protests against the Soviet nuclear site grew to encompass domestic nuclear projects in general, and...

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the possibility of reducing Europe’s energy dependence on Russian resources has been hotly debated. The fossil fuel industries received most attention as European Union leaders first introduced gradual sanctions on Russian coal and later on oil and gas, while Russia responded with supply cuts. However,...

Norway, a key supplier of hydrocarbons and clean energy, can play a pivotal role in the EU's green transition by providing critical raw materials and batteries. However, political and regulatory obstacles must be addressed to realize this potential. Norway's alignment with the European Green Deal and its commitment to sustainability initiatives mak...

To understand the political dimension of dissident legacies, we need first to understand the components that “made” the dissidents and follow their reconfiguration after 1989, leading to initial empowerment followed by gradual demise of the liberal post-dissident elite. Dissidence in the form that first appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s in...

This working paper, which is one of deliverables of the NORPOLFACTOR project, maps mutual perceptions of Poland in Norway and Norway in Poland, the basic ideas informing their approaches to security-related challenges caused by their location in Russia’s neighbourhood as well as what could be termed as areas of cooperation and points of contention...

Background One of the potential dimensions on which exclusion and injustice may occur in energy transitions is age. Age-based patterns of exclusion—ageism—has recently been conceptualized in the context of decarbonization as energy ageism. This paper offers a comparative empirical analysis of the senior citizens’ outlook towards an imminent energy...

Poland’s significant potential to benefit from becoming a key player in the global green economy is thwarted by a network of powerful, fossil-fuelled climate obstructionists. Key actors: Governmental institutions (Ministry of Climate and the Environment, the Ministry of State Assets), state-owned energy companies (e.g. Orlen and PGE), political fi...

The notion of ‘just transition’ (JT) is an attempt to align climate and energy objectives with the material concerns of industrial workers, frontline communities, and marginalised groups. Despite the potential for fusing social and environmental justice, there is growing concern that the concept is being mobilised in practice as a form of ‘climate...

This report offers a critical, candid examination of the landscape of global climate action. Current efforts are lacking even amid consecutive UN climate conferences that build upon the successes of the 2015 Paris Agreement. It argues that the incremental progress achieved thus far is insufficient to address the escalating climate crisis. Challenge...

Staying Outside the EU Does not Make Norway’s Climate Policy More Ambitious The article discusses Norway’s climate policy in light of the country’s non-membership status in the European Union (EU). Despite claims that Norway, staying outside the EU, may have greater autonomy in shaping climate policy, the study shows that this does not necessarily...

What are the geopolitical risk implications related to the war in Ukraine for the raw material and energy policies of countries highly dependent on Russia? This paper looks at the Visegrad Group (V4) states-Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia-as some of the most impacted countries and assesses their position in the emerging new geopolitical and...

Through detailed and wide-ranging analysis, the Handbook on European Union Climate Change Policy and Politics provides a critical assessment of current and emerging challenges facing the EU in committing to and delivering increasingly ambitious climate policy objectives. Highlighting the importance of topics such as finance and investment, litigati...

As part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission has launched a tool to protect the fulfilment of Europe's climate policy targets – the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). It is thought that the CBAM will spark stiff resistance from Europe's external trade partners, potentially undermining the initiative. How this plays out will d...

All Norwegian governments in the twenty-first century, left and right, have made climate action an important element of their diplomacy and domestic policy, while recently some political parties have even made climate neutrality and decarbonisation the core of their electoral campaign messages. Norway has played the role of an advocate for internat...

Background One of the potential dimensions on which exclusion and injustice may occur in energy transitions is age. That age-based pattern of exclusion – ageism – has recently been conceptualized in the context of decarbonization as energy ageism. This paper offers a comparative empirical analysis of the impact of energy poverty as well as the seni...

• Sanctions on Russian oil & gas resulting from the invasion of Ukraine have made Norway EU's primary supplier, but locking-in a high carbon export pathway is a major risk for Norway • Norway’s key role in Europe’s energy transition and working towards a green strategic autonomy is matched with the importance of the European Union for the future ph...

As the European Union expanded eastward in 2004 and 2007 to cover the formerly communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), this triggered a wave of migration which saw millions of people moving to Western and Northern European countries. What impact did that migration have on the politics of CEE countries, and what might be the relationsh...

This chapter compares external voting of CEE diasporas in Western Europe with voting patterns observed in those diasporas’ respective countries of origin. It focuses on electoral turnout, overall variation in support for parties, and variation in support for parties with respect to key ideological dimensions and issues. Using quantitative data on a...

This open access book is the first monograph that brings together insights from comparative politics, political sociology, and migration studies to introduce the current state of knowledge on external voting and transnational politics. Drawing on new data gathered within the DIASPOlitic project, which created a comparative dataset of external votin...

The European Union's Eastern Enlargement of 2004–2007 triggered a large wave of migration. While the influence of Central-Eastern European (CEE) migrants on Western European politics has been studied, the impact of outward migration and political remittances “sent” by expatriates remain unexplored, despite the salience of democratic backsliding and...

This chapter explores migrants’ perspectives on voting in country-of-origin elections and on participation in democratic politics in countries of origin in Central and East Europe. We build on 80 semi-structured interviews with migrants from Poland and Romania, living in Barcelona, Spain, and Oslo, Norway. The chapter offers an analysis of their th...

Migrants' property ownership in their countries of origin is often understood through the prism of return: both intended and actual return mobilities. Applying a transnational optic, this article unpacks the relationships between migrants' property ownership 'back home' and their reflections on future moves and stays, not limited to possible return...

Prior to 2022, Norwegian policymakers have hardly considered coherence between energy and security, and the few coordinating elements in place are focused on emergency preparedness. • Keeping policy areas separate and energy de-securitized has helped improve Norway's position in the old energy world. However, both the progressing European energy tr...

In this report, we document how policy makers and representatives of businesses and civil society organisations (including trade unions and environmental groups) have outlined pathway scenarios towards net-zero carbon emissions and a phase-out vision for the Norwegian oil and gas industry. They have developed these two scenarios participating in a...

This article analyses how, in Poland, the populist political orientation of the ruling party (Law and Justice—PiS) has coloured the historical discourse of the government and has affected, in turn, its foreign policy and diplomatic relations. We argue that the historical discourse of the PiS government is a reflection of the party’s reliance on pop...

How is the democratization of energy governance in the times of an imminent energy transition and decarbonization constrained or empowered by talking security? This chapter seeks to explore three theoretical dichotomies. The first is the perception of security as something inherently positive or negative, which is a major division line in Critical...

The European Commission has announced far-reaching reforms to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Among the proposals constituting the European Green Deal is the adoption of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage. In practice, however, CBAM will not only act as a shield for the European Emissions Tra...

The digitalisation of the energy system brings out the question of cyber threats. How this area is perceived and how cyber-security policy in the energy sector develops is driven by the most spectacular cyber-incidents. How do these events shape public perceptions about the dangers of digitalisation? To understand this, we look at the 2016 CrashOve...

Migration may affect migrants’ ideas as they become exposed to different contexts over time. But how does such exposure and opportunities for comparative evaluation of origin and settlement contexts, translate into content for potential political remittances? To answer this question, we analyse 80 interviews with Polish and Romanian migrants living...

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the risk of a prolonged physical supply shortage of natural gas is higher than ever before. While European Union (EU) institutions and member states are discussing the possibility of imposing an embargo or a gradual phase-out in this sector, an abrupt shortage may result from a political decision on the suppl...

Decentralization of the electricity sector has mainly been studied in relation to its infrastructural aspect, particularly location and size of the generation units, and only recently more attention has been paid to the governance aspects. This article examines power sector (de)centralization operationalized along three functional dimensions: polit...

Non-resident citizens’ participation in national elections is known as external voting. This report presents the first comparative dataset of external voting, both in parliamentary and presidential elections. We gathered voting results among migrants from nine Central and Eastern European countries, with the main analysis focusing on six where most...

The oil and gas (O&G) sector is a major source of Norway’s national wealth and a pillar of its robust welfare state. At the same time, it makes a significant contribution to the global climate crisis. The oil and gas industry makes up 28% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, the second-highest source after transport, and this is only co...

Highlights •This paper comments on Krzykowski and Zięty (2021) article. •It critically evaluates their arguments and approaches. •The paper discusses challenges connected to review process. •It scrutinizes quality control mechanism in interdisciplinary research.

External voting by nonresident citizens has become an important feature of contemporary democratic politics. However, compared to the average voter in domestic elections, we still know significantly less about migrants' motivations to vote or not. Whereas analyses of external voting patterns offer insights into the results of external voting compar...

In this report, we present insights from interviews with Polish and Romanian migrants living in Barcelona and Oslo. These interviews were conducted as part of the DIASPOlitic project “Understanding the Political Dynamics of Émigré Communities in an Era of European Democratic Backsliding”. The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway and...

Despite the burgeoning literature, evidence on how right-wing populists frame and act on energy and climate issues is limited and even more scarce for other types of populist parties. We address this gap by exploring the policy discourses, positions and actions of six European populist parties from Austria, Czechia, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain...

Kiedy w mediach pojawia się temat spalania biomasy drzewnej, obraz, który maluje się przed oczami większości czytelników, to zapewne wycinka pięknego drzewa o wymiarach niemal pomnikowych, które jest dalej cięte w kawałki i wrzucane do pieca elektrociepłowni. Taka wizja z oczywistych względów oburza, a jej następstwem są pytania: ile potrzeba lat,...

The scant but growing literature on populism in the context of energy transitions and climate policy almost entirely focuses on right-wing populists. However, evidence on how right-wing populist parties frame and act on energy and climate issues is limited and even more scarce for other types of populist parties. We address this gap by exploring th...

This article analyses how, in Poland, the populist political orientation of the ruling party (Law and Justice—PiS) has coloured the historical discourse of the government and has affected, in turn, its foreign policy and diplomatic relations. We argue that the historical discourse of the PiS government is a reflection of the party’s reliance on pop...

Challenging one-eyed technology-focused accounts of renewables policy, this book provides a ground-breaking, deep-diving and genre-crossing longitudinal study of policy development. The book develops a multi-field explanatory approach, capturing inter-relationships between actors often analyzed in isolation. It provides empirically rich and system...

This chapter explains why Poland has changed its renewables support scheme very often and why in 2016 it ended up with a highly technology-specific renewables support mix. The European environment is shown to be crucial in pushing for establishment as well as changes in Polish renewables support schemes, whereas much of the legislative volatility –...

Energy democracy' has evolved from a slogan used by activists demanding a greater say in energy-related decision-making to a term used in policy documents and scholarly literature on energy governance and energy transitions. This article reviews the academic literature using a combination of three methodological elements: (1) keyword searches of ma...

Energy democracy' has evolved from a slogan used by activists demanding a greater say in energy-related decision-making to a term used in policy documents and scholarly literature on energy governance and energy transitions. This article reviews the academic literature using a combination of three methodological elements: (1) keyword searches of ma...

States have increasingly become linked through regional energy-related institutions, mar kets, infrastructure, and politics. ASEAN, EU, SADC, ECOWAS, Eurasian Union, NAFTA, and UNASUR, inter alia, have formal agreements and institutions covering energy. Re newable, nuclear, and fossil fuel energy sources, as well as pipelines and electricity grids,...

If we agree that the oil price is a social institution, embedded in socio-economic and political practices (Belyi 2016), this means that it is not only the outcome of these practices, but also a causal factor, shaping actions and events. From an interpretivist perspective, however, there is yet another distinction to be drawn: that between the pric...

Freedom of movement—particularly to travel and work in the “West”—was something Central Europeans dreamed of behind the Iron Curtain, and used to be given as the number one rationale for joining the EU. What if mass migration and democratic backsliding are not just coincidental? Are we overlooking the impact of personal experiences of the ‘West’ on...

Is populist politics a threat to ambitious climate action and decarbonisation of energy systems? With the coinciding challenges of an alleged global ‘populist wave,’ and the growing visibility of a planetary climate crisis, this issue has gained relevance. While theoretical literature on the links between populism and climate action is growing, the...

As energy security becomes a key topic of policy debates, not least in Central and Eastern European states, which are vulnerable to gas supply disruptions from Russia, it has been suggested that EU energy policy becomes 'securitized'. However, full securitization attempts, which not only identify threats but also call for exceptional measures to de...

While political environmentalism played an important role in social mobilization against communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe before 1989, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s conservationism appeared to be in decline across the region, and external pressure from European institutions and Western donors influenced environmental policy. W...

Was societal dissent to authoritarian regimes always an important point of academic interest? Unsurprisingly perhaps, given the Cold War mindset’s preoccupation with warheads and state leaders, domestic dissent in Eastern Europe attracted Western attention quite late. This introductory chapter reviews the literature on societal opposition to Commun...

What is it that unites and defines a variety of people that are called “dissidents”—in the media, political debates or academic literature? This chapter provides a compendium of five definitions, gathered through a board literature review and interviews with former human rights activists and political oppositionists. It then traces the evolution of...

To become transnationally functioning personas and to gain recognition, the dissidents needed to be individualized—and known by name. While Stalinist propaganda tended to bundle opponents together under broad categories of enemies, in the 1960s Communist media opted for individual condemnation of defiant acts. That gave dissenters, particularly aft...

Dissidentism combines open, nonviolent acts of domestic political dissent with transnational circulation, which gives the defiant opponents of authoritarian regimes an international audience and potential support. However, Stalinist regimes used repression and denunciation as tools that thwarted dissent, and closed borders blocked transnational cir...

Following the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago in 1974 and the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975, the transnational political conditions became increasingly favorable for political opposition behind the Iron Curtain. Two Central European initiatives became pivotal in establishing dissidence as a new object of Western attention:...

The first half of the 1970s was a time of soul-searching for the opposition, but by 1975 open political dissent reemerged, beginning a new chapter in the struggle with Communist authoritarianism. Three elements had to be in place before the transnational figure of the dissident in the form that we now know it could emerge. Firstly, the massive wave...

The Eastern European opposition quickly noticed the “dissident” label as one imposed on them by the West. But by whom precisely? Drawing on the concept of Orientalism, this chapter describes how Western experts—“Sovietologists” and media correspondents in particular—helped to create the dissident figure and shape it into something not necessarily r...

The appearance of Poland’s trade union “Solidarity” marks a new phase in the evolution of the dissident figure. Following the military backlash and another wave of migration, the “dissident” label could be generalized and applied not to dozens, but hundreds and even thousands of rank-and-file unionists, new independent groups and much younger, ofte...

The chapter sums up the book’s empirical findings and proposes an ideal-typical model of transnational dissidentism and the emergence of new transnational actors—a “dissident triangle.” It is composed of open, nonviolent political dissent, domestic renown, and notoriety amplified by domestic official and unofficial media and transnational channels...

From the moment the word “dissident” began to gain international currency and the transnational dissident figure began to have a looping effect on them, Central European opposition intellectuals began reflecting on it, resisting it, but also performing it and using the new source of visible transnational empowerment for their purposes. The chapter...

Czy katastrofa w Czarnobylu przyczyniła się do upadku komunizmu? Skąd wziął się polski ruch ekologiczny i dlaczego po 1989 roku nie stworzył silnej politycznej reprezentacji? Niniejsza monografia umiejscawia anty-atomowe protesty, które przetoczyły się przez Polskę w latach 1985-90, w szerszym kontekście. Energetyka jądrowa była przez kilka dekad s...

In climate and energy studies, it is not only the continuous rise of global average annual temperatures that is apparent. The temperature of the discussions on policy, governance and technology solutions has also reached a boiling point in many areas. This is most visible in the case of controversial energy generation technologies. Controversial he...

This editorial introduces the thematic issue "EU Energy Policy: Towards a Clean Energy Transition?", nesting it in broader discussion on European Union's (EU) energy policy. For over a decade, the EU has displayed an interest and political motivation to integrate climate policy priorities into its energy governance. However, the history of European...

This thematic issue looks at the most recent changes in the European Union's energy governance, particularly the 2015 Energy Union and 2016 Clean Energy Package. It is divided into three sections. The first investigates the EU Energy Union, its governance and decarbonization ambitions. The second section looks at the increasing overlaps between ene...

The impact of renewables on the energy markets-falling wholesale electricity prices and lower investment stability-are apparently creating a shortage of energy project financing, which in future could lead to power supply shortages. Governments have responded by introducing payments for capacity, alongside payments for energy being sold. The increa...

In this article, we respond to a number of points raised by Dominik Smyrgała in his recent piece “Fukushima and Energiewende.” We believe his piece, although timely and taking on an important topic, suffers from three important issues. Smyrgała makes selective use of statistical data and opinions, and bends some facts and the spirit of certain docu...

Our chapter brings together four Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) scholars into a conversation about their research and policy engagements, working within History, Political Science, Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies. We develop a socio-technical perspective and turn that into a conceptual tool pack, to interrogate and explore the e...

Speaking truth to powers-that-be and overthrowing a “regime of lies” were both dissident trademarks during the Cold War era. But what if overreliance on such an idealized and static notion of Truth can be a problem in an age of post-factual politics and information warfare? In this essay, I first problematize the idea that “truth will set us free”...

Michał Krzykowski and Karolina Krzykowska (2017) in an article published in this journal entitled “Will the European Commission's policy hinder gas supplies to Central and Eastern European countries? OPAL case decision” discuss the consequences of European Commission's (EC) exemption from internal energy market rules (especially the third party acc...

Why has the Polish government decided to give in to environmental protesters in the widely publicised case of the Rospuda River (2006-2007) but chooses to ignore both EU pressure and domestic activism the ongoing protests against the logging of the Białowieża forest? It is difficult to understand the difference without an in-depth analysis of domes...

The chapter looks at the electricity sector, which is very rarely the object of interest in Security Studies and political science, despite its clear importance as a vital energy sector sustaining vital functions and values of (post)modern societies. We trace security debates in two sub-sectors – renewables and nuclear energy and in two neighbourin...

This introductory chapter begins with a review of the academic discussion on the way 'energy security' should be understood. After presenting the most conventional definition, I distinguish between three main approaches to elaborating and (re)defining that notion, and argue for the importance of an analytical concept of 'energy security', allowing...

In this chapter we identify some key areas for future research on “energy securitization” through both an examination of what Securitization Studies could learn from the study of energy issues and what insights could be drawn from theoretical developments within Securitization Studies for the study of energy security. After a brief overview of the...

Drawing on Buzan, Wæver and Wilde—central to the so-called Copenhagen School in Security Studies—the chapter proposes a way of applying the classic formulation of the securitisation model to energy security. Signalling some important critique that the Copenhagen School model picked up over the last two decades, we propose some reformulations. This...

This chapter provides a very broad overview of different energy policy and energy security issues that Europe faces, and those for which it needs to prepare itself for in the future. It asks whether EU energy governance has gained a new sense of direction since the Ukraine Crises erupted. We argue that the crisis was a bombshell moment for European...

Energy security rhetoric has a different flavour depending on where you stand. It carries different meanings and refers to different objects. Although official policy definitions of energy security are broadly similar across countries, emphasising the reliability and affordability of access to sufficient energy resources for a community to uphold i...

The surprising and perhaps even paradoxical demise of a mass environmental protest movement in Poland after its heyday in the late 1980s has already drawn significant scholarly attention (Gliński and Koziarek 2007; Szulecki et al. 2015; Van Eeden 2016). So has the wider process of the “NGO-ization” of civil society in post-communist contexts (cf. S...

Poland’s energy mix is dominated by indigenous coal, and since the country joined the European Union in 2004 it has been clear that it will do much to safeguard its domestic coal sector and resist pressures for ambitious harmonized decarbonization efforts. At the same time, Poland is meeting its renewable energy targets and its onshore wind capacit...

Poland’s energy mix is dominated by indigenous coal, and since the country joined the European Union in 2004 it has been clear that it will do much to safeguard its domestic coal sector and resist pressures for ambitious harmonized decarbonization efforts. At the same time, Poland is meeting its renewable energy targets and its onshore wind capacit...

W pierwszym roku przychody na rodzinę we wsi podwoiły się. Po 12 latach stanowiły dziesięciokrotność wyjściowych. Brzmi jak bajka. Ale tak naprawdę chodziło o bardzo proste kroki i przezwyciężenie starych przyzwyczajeń i niesnasek. Kluczem było namówienie chłopów, żeby obsiewali własne pola. Niby proste, ale czasem nie mieli czym, czasem nie wiedzi...

Das aktuelle Konzept einer europäischen »Energie-Union«, das auf eine Initiative des amtierenden Präsidenten des Europäischen Rates, Donald Tusk, in seiner Zeit als polnischer Ministerpräsident zurückgeht, betont die Bedeutung regionaler Kooperation für die europäische Energiepolitik und insbesondere auch die Versorgungssicherheit. Dieser Beitrag u...

The recently proposed overarching concept of a European " Energy Union " stresses the importance of regional cooperation, as it has become clear that absent increased coordination and cross-border cooperation, more obstacles than synergies may emerge. Looking at Germany and Poland, this policy brief examines how discrepancies between European Union...

Aktualne stężenie CO2 w atmosferze wynosi ponad 404 cząsteczki na milion, o 40 więcej niż w roku 2000. Średnia globalna temperatura roczna była w roku 2015 (najcieplejszym w historii, ale obecny się jeszcze nie skończył) o 1°C wyższa niż przed rewolucją przemysłową. Jak wygląda świat, który kryje się za tymi abstrakcyjnymi liczbami?

Mezi axiomy, na nichž se zakládá Havlova morální politická strategie, je jeden nejnápadnější. Není jeho vynálezem ani není výsadou jeho vlastního psaní. Co je to? Prosté přesvědčení: Pravda vítězí. A to nás osvobodí. Alespoň tak jsme si to mysleli.