Lennart J. Lundqvist

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at University of Gothenburg

Suggestions for transforming ecological sustainability into operative social choice mechanisms can be viewed through the bifocal lens of limits on, and opportunities for, the ecological state. Using lines of reasoning brought in from the comparative study of environmental policy, this article tries to stake out how far the ecological state can go i...

This paper contributes to the current discussion on whether 'soft' regulation actually influences policy outcomes by examining the effects of national policy instruments on municipal climate and energy planning. Sweden has experienced shifts in the incentive context over the last decades complementing soft planning regulations with stringent condit...

This paper contributes to the current discussion on whether ?soft? regulation actually influences policy outcomes by examining the effects of national policy instruments on municipal climate and energy planning. Sweden has experienced shifts in the incentive context over the last decades complementing soft planning regulations with stringent condit...

Summarizing the comparative project Governance and Environment in Western Europe, Alf-Inge Jansen and his co-editors state that industrialized countries increasingly adapt environmental policies to the com- petitive logic of global financial markets. Political and economic elites see «ecological modernization» as rec- onciling political, econom...

Individual local governments are key players in Sweden's strategy for climate adaptation but their authority does not match the scale of climate change and its impacts. Competences are divided among local, regional and national authorities. Climate adaptation thus requires cooperation, particularly in metropolitan regions. This raises issues of coo...

Den omskrivna rapporten ”The New Climate Economy” från september 2014 sätter fokus på klimatvänlig stadsplanering som ett avgörande instrument för att minska utsläppen. I den här artikeln jämför forskare från Sverige och Norge hur aktuell norsk och svensk planlagstiftning tar sig an klimat- och energiplaneringen, särskilt vilka förändringar de...

Although starting out as a protest movement in the early 1980s, the Swedish Greens moved to become a contractual supporter of Social Democratic governments from 1998 to 2006, and then became an active partner of the Red–Green Coalition seeking parliamentary power in the 2010 general elections. Against the background of lingering strife between ‘fun...

Proponents of the cosmopolitan view of ecological citizenship claim that in order to fulfil the moral obligations of global justice, citizens must undergo deep attitude shifts and adopt green civic virtues. To test this empirically, a typology of four major combinations of environmental attitudes and ecological practise is constructed and the exten...

The point of departure of this study is the question whether differences in political structures also lead to differences in the policy alternatives selected for practical use. The study examines the influence of federal/unitary, parliamentary/balance-of-power, and administrative/judicial structural aspects on the selection of policy alternatives f...

This article uses a framework combining the discourse of scalar politics with a social dilemma perspective. The aim is to find answers to why political interests advocate a specific scalar arrangement. Analyzing informant interviews with top politicians and administrators in four municipal governments in the Gothenburg region of southwestern Sweden...

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used ‘in reverse’ to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end,...

Sweden aims at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by four per cent by 2008–2012 from the 1990 level. The different measures to achieve this effectively involve local-level organizations. A survey was made among 356 local public and private officers in south-western Sweden to tap respondents' views on different aspects of the climate issue. Regress...

The environmental “crisis” is now a top priority in many industrialized countries. Perceived of as a threat to a society's resources, the environmental problem raises important questions regarding competing system goals. The problem cuts across traditional political and administrative structures and thus carries several implications for political c...

This paper analyses proposals for new multi-level governance of Swedish water resources to implement the EU Water Framework Directive. The question is, do they satisfy the criteria for ecologically rational and democratically legitimate governance? The core of the analysis concerns an administrative 'trilemma' encountered in designing ecologically...

This article analyses what it takes for a new discourse to acquire formative power all the way from the formulation of ideas to the institutionalisation of new practices. Starting from seemingly contradictory propositions in the literature on housing and environmental policy discourses, and combining these with a contextual rational action approach...

This chapter examines the extent to which policy measures taken in Sweden to achieve ecologically sustainable development shape and/or rearrange the structures and processes of governance in such a way that the collective outcome is ecologically rational and democratically acceptable. It explains the specific criteria for what constitutes a system...

This chapter examines the role of science and of knowledge in environmental and resource management and in ecological governance. It discusses the criteria for knowledge-based and democratic ecological governance and describes the organising knowledge for sustainable resource governance. It considers solution-oriented research to develop green tech...

This chapter focuses on attempts to improve the effectiveness and integration of ecological governance in Sweden. It suggests that an environmental policy is fully integrated when it satisfies the three criteria of comprehensiveness, consistency and aggregation. It explains that effective integration means that environmental concerns are taken into...

This chapter highlights the importance of achieving the right balance between democracy and ecological governance. It explains that while ecological governance for sustainability must profoundly affect all and everyone in order to be successful, it cannot achieve legitimacy without offering each and everyone a possibility to participate in the form...

This chapter focuses on the so-called ecology cycle and Sweden's strategies for temporally rational ecological governance. It discusses the criteria for temporally rational ecological governance and relevance of land use planning and restrictions for ecological governance. This chapter proposes management by objectives (MBO) as a flexible way of mo...

This chapter considers the spatial dimensions of ecological governance. It explains that space is of central concern to rational ecological governance and discusses Elinor Ostrom's opinion that ecosystem-based governance is one of congruence between a natural ecosystem and the unit of governance for that system. This chapter analyses ideas on ecosy...

This chapter examines how the emerging system of ecological governance in Sweden affects the political authority of democratic national government. It explains that governments engaging in efforts to bring about sustainable development are expected to encounter political opposition and competition among conflicting values and interests. It contends...

This chapter evaluates whether the Swedish government is actually straddling the fence over to sustainable development and whether this expands or limits citizens' opportunities to make autonomous choices of the good life. Though much of the Swedish strategy for a sustainable society is still in the making, it has done enough to warrant some conclu...

Sweden is seen as a forerunner in environmental and ecological policy. This book is about policies and strategies for ecologically rational governance, and uses the Swedish case study to ask whether or not it is possible to move from a traditional environmental policy to a broad, integrated pursuit of sustainable development, as illustrated through...

This paper analyses the outcome of an actor game aimed at énding ways to institutionalise farmer co-operation in a water catchment threatened by eutrophication from heavy use of fertilisers. Although offered several advanta- geous options for collective action, acting farmers stuck to their preference for individual management in spite of very drac...

Suggestions for transforming ecological sustainability into operative social choice mechanisms can be viewed through the bifocal lens of limits on, and opportunities for, the ecological state. Using lines of reasoning brought in from the comparative study of environmental policy, this article tries to stake out how far the ecological state can go i...

This paper seeks to assess the tenability of Rhodes' view of the “new governance” as “governing without government,” as well as the validity of Pierre and Peters' assertions that the state is still at the center of structures and processes of governance. The case used for analysis is Sweden's ecological modernization and the implementation of Local...

How can the change from ‘traditional environmental policy’ towards ‘ecological modernisation’, visible in many countries, be explained? After establishing the elements of ‘ecological modernisation’ found in recent literature, this article first assesses whether the recent and massive environmental policy changes in Sweden fit these characteristics....

Democracy and the Integrity of the Commons - Volume 18 Issue 2 - Lennart J. Lundqvist

Starting from the Conservative assertion that home ownership fosters politic- ally active and virtuous citizens, this paper examines two lines of argument in housing theory; (a) Jim Kemeny's thesis that owner occupation is closely linked to increasing privatism, i.e. a growth in lifestyles centred around the home and privacy rather than the workpla...

Networks are important institutional features in local community affairs. They function as information centres and bargaining structures in politics. Through networks, local political actors can furthermore build a reputation which becomes an asset — sometimes even a form of veto power — in the decision-making process (Knoke 1990: 133, 138-9). Elec...

With an area of almost 450,000 km2, Sweden is the third largest nation in what was before 1989 called Western Europe. The distance from the southernmost shore to the northernmost border is greater than that between Copenhagen and Rome. Lakes and streams cover 9% of the country. Agricultural land is 8%, while 3% is populated. The rest - 80% - is for...

Recent contributions to the literature on collective action towards common pool resources (CPR) hold that for such action to become institutionalized among the principals sharing the CPR, there must develop “trust and a sense of community.” Using data on existing environmental cooperation among Swedish municipalities, as well as data from a 1991 su...

In this essay, I try to roll some stones away which block the resurrection of policy as a proper focus for comparative housing research. To this end, I propose a classification of policy content based on processes common to all systems of housing provision. I also outline an analytical framework linking important contextual factors to that content,...

Some recent work in housing research seems to downplay the role of politics in forming the content of housing policy. Building on the “power resources” and “state autonomy” approaches developed in welfare state research, this article outlines an explanatory framework including ideological and constituent factors most important to policy choice, as...

‘Corporatist implementation’ plays an important role throughout the Swedish rental sector. It is based on close ideological affiliations and adherence to common policy objectives among the Social Democratic government and the organised interests in the public rental sector. In this article, I describe how it works in rent policy as well in the prog...

Affected by the ideological symbolism and political controversy surrounding privatization, much of the work on this subject is marred by definitional uncertainty; what should be included in the concept? To get away from this, and to prepare the ground for meaningful comparative analysis of the phenomenon, I propose both a definition and a taxonomy....

The Swedish housing policy decision of 1974 is internationally unique in its specific quest to establish neutrality between housing tenures, not only in terms of costs, but also with regard to housing standard and household influence over housing management. After presenting the 1974 policy objectives, an interpretation of these goals is attempted...

Two strategies for increasing tenant influence and decreasing the need for state housing subsidies are discussed: 1) conversion of rental dwellings into cooperatives or condominiums, and 2) changes in the content of rental tenure. Some Scandinavian examples are presented as a basis for discussion of the viability of the two strategies. The conversi...

The institutional and legislative framework of Swedish environmental protection is presented with special reference to the role of consultation in the policy process. The functions and duties of the National Environment Protection Board, the Franchise Board for Environment Protection, the Environment Advisory Board, and the Product Control Board ar...

At present, Swedish procedures for environmental impact assessment - EIA - are under close scrutiny and debate. Should foreign (i.e. US) procedures be adopted, or should indigenous procedures be developed or refined? After presenting existing procedures for EIA of individual projects, this paper analyses present proposals to change and redirects th...

The American and Swedish clean air policies in force since 1969-1970 differ in many important aspects, thus offering an interesting case for comparison of the impact of different air pollution control approaches. Both countries have had some success in fighting air pollution. However, the United States has been more successful in controlling auto e...

This paper is an effort to evaluate the existing literature on comparative environmental politics and policy from the viewpoints of intra-disciplinary accumulation of knowledge and extra-disciplinary, or “practical,” relevance; the notion being that political scientists can better promote practical solutions to pressing environmental problems by br...

Im folgenden geht es ausschließlich um die Formen öffentlicher Beteiligung beim Vollzug politischer Beschlüsse. Partizipationsmöglichkeiten im Bereich der Potitikformulierung werden hier nicht behandelt.

ånga av dagens miljöproblem kan förklaras av människors direkta såväl som indirekta beteenden, både som privatpersoner och i form av val som besluts- fattare gör. Vi ställs inför många valsituationer som påverkar den framtida miljön och klimatet. Ska vi åka bil, cykla eller gå till jobbet? Ska vi köpa konventionellt eller ekologiskt odlade grönsake...

Most literature on the Green Parties points to their start as movements of protest against 'regular' politics and the existing political system. It also points to the ideological strife between two strands of Green, i.e., the fundamentalists shunning and the realists prone to participate in traditional politics. There is furthermore a number of stu...