Today humankind is facing numerous sustainability challenges that require us to question CO2 intensive practices like those present in the transport and energy sector. To meet those challenges, many countries have adopted ambitious climate targets. Achieving such targets requires an understanding of the wider socio-technical context of transitions. The aim of this licentiate thesis is therefore to analyse such socio-technical transitions towards low-emission futures enabled by the electrification of passenger cars and high voltage grid development.
A combination of different transitions theories (for ex. Multi-level perspective and Technological innovation systems) and institutional theory has been used. To reach the aim paper I analyses the climate impacts of electric vehicles (EVs) and policy measures to achieve a breakthrough scenario for EVs. The results show that a mixture of short and long term policies are needed that take into account the technology development stage and behavioural aspects of EV adopters. Paper II addresses the need to include the high voltage transmission grid and its planning procedures as a central part of debates on transitions. Therefore the opportunities, challenges and reasons for conflict in the established regime are studied. The results show that in order to achieve a sustainable grid development regime, it is necessary to spend time on achieving legitimacy and social sustainability. The third paper uses semi-structured expert interviews and focuses on innovation dynamics for EV adoption. By focusing on dynamics instead of single policy measures, it is possible to grasp interactions within a niche, but also in between a niche, regime and landscape. The results show that strong initial technology legitimacy was needed to start substantial innovation dynamics. This could be further strengthened with a strong and broad coalition of actors. Both those factors led, if present, to an improved variety and match of policy instruments.
As such this thesis has shown that transitions are not just about technology or policy instruments as such but about the dynamics and processes needed to enable them. This can be relevant in other transitions that otherwise may underestimate the importance of these components.
This paper focuses on the comparison of electric car innovation patterns in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Doing so, it takes a closer look at what the most essential dynamics in the systems were over time and what enabled those dynamics. The main research aim is to contribute to a wider understanding of why Norway is so much ahead of Sweden and Denmark in electric car adoption. The purpose is also to adopt a perspective that goes beyond a mere focus on economic policy instruments. In order to do so different theory elements are combined in a framework. These elements stem from the transition theory literature field, especially the technological innovation system (TIS) and the multi-level perspective (MLP). This combination allows analysing the development behind a dynamic, not just when it comes to an innovation itself but also with regards to the established regime. The data is gathered through analysis of existing documents and data as well as a series of 27 expert interviews conducted in the three case countries. The findings suggest that there are important differences in transition patterns that can account for the electric vehicle (EV) diffusion situation we can find nowadays in the three Nordic countries. An important stepping stone was the need for a very strong legitimacy of the original EV vision that is also anchored in a coordinated, sector overarching coalition of actors that thinks strategically and long term. Moreover some general beneficial dynamics could be identified across the countries in question. In Norway these beneficial dynamics can be summarised as a systems motor, in Denmark as a failed entrepreneurial motor that shifted towards a constrained municipal motor and in Sweden as a loosely, coordinated and weaker version of a systems motor.
This report examines policy drivers of electric vehicles (EVs), and what potential role policy can play in enhancing the innovation and market development of EVs. We start with a policy review of key targets in the Nordic countries and the EU, up to 2030, and discuss to what extent they are consistent with industry, government and expert estimates of how the EV innovation systems can grow. On the basis of this, the second part examines what policy drivers might be needed to enable a breakthrough scenario, using a technological innovation systems (TIS) perspective to describe the needed processes, drivers and developments in policy and technology.
Reglerna som möjliggör stängning av hemsidor på internet präglas av godtycke och otydlighet. Men det behöver inte vara särskilt svårt att skapa ett nytt och rättssäkert regelverk. Här har Sveriges EU-kommissionär Cecilia Malmström en viktig roll. Frågan är om hon tar sitt ansvar, skriver politiker och nätdebattörer.
On July 29th 2017, Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica made ‘history’ by completing the earliest seasonal transit through the Northwest Passage in only 24 days. Newspapers around the world reported on the event by publishing stories on the melting ice and curiosities of life onboard. What these articles did not convey is how this transit was also an attempt to provide a different platform to talk about the future of the “New Arctic”.
The question that whether Twitter data can be leveraged to forecast outcome of the elections has always been of great anticipation in the research community. Existing research focuses on leveraging content analysis for positivity or negativity analysis of the sentiments of opinions expressed. This is while, analysis of link structure features of social networks underlying the conversation involving politicians has been less looked. The intuition behind such study comes from the fact that density of conversations about parties along with their respective members, whether explicit or implicit, should reflect on their popularity. On the other hand, dynamism of interactions, can capture the inherent shift in popularity of accounts of politicians. Within this manuscript we present evidence of how a well-known link prediction algorithm, can reveal an authoritative structural link formation within which the popularity of the political accounts along with their neighbourhoods, shows strong correlation with the standing of electoral outcomes. As an evidence, the public time-lines of two electoral events from 2014 elections of Sweden on Twitter have been studied. By distinguishing between member and official party accounts, we report that even using a focus-crawled public dataset, structural link popularities bear strong statistical similarities with vote outcomes. In addition we report strong ranked dependence between standings of selected politicians and general election outcome, as well as for official party accounts and European election outcome.
In recent decades politicians and policy-makers have emphasised the need to shift from a "passive" to an "active" welfare state. This has resulted in policies that reduce compensation rates in social insurance or make compensation conditional on different requirements such as participation in rehabilitation or vocational training. This article argues that such policies are justified if they tend to ensure an adequate level of personal autonomy. To that effect, a 'thick' conception of personal autonomy is spelled out based on Norman Daniels' extension of the principle of fair equality of opportunity. Some objections to policies limiting entitlement to social insurance are discussed. It is argued that although the objections fail to show that limited entitlement to social insurance is always unjustified, they identify considerations that must be taken into account for an overall assessment of such policies.
While some of the future impacts of global environmental change such as some aspects of climate change can be projected and prepared for in advance, other effects are likely to surface as surprises - that is situations in which the behaviour in a system, or across systems, differs qualitatively from expectations. Here we analyse a set of institutional and political leadership challenges posed by 'cascading' ecological crises: abrupt ecological changes that propagate into societal crises that move through systems and spatial scales. We illustrate their underlying social and ecological drivers, and a range of institutional and political leadership challenges, which have been insufficiently elaborated by either crisis management researchers or institutional scholars. We conclude that even though these sorts of crises have parallels to other contingencies, there are a number of major differences resulting from the combination of a lack of early warnings, abrupt ecological change, and the mismatch between decision-making capabilities and the cross-scale dynamics of social-ecological change.
This paper examines the phenomenon of refugees and resettled persons in the process of forcedmigrations in the aftermath of man-made disasters. Although some of the ideas presented here couldhave wider application, the focus is on post-conflict zones within the former Yugoslavia, namely BiH.The paper uses the questions of ethnicity and nationalism within resettlement, dislocation and immigrationas a backdrop, into which the issue of globalization is also briefly reflected. The intention hereis not to cover a wide range of pressing topics, but simply to relate a number of issues arising in contemporarylarge-scale forced migrations to a resurgence of cultural specificity and ethnicized nationalismas counterpoints to globalization. The paper introduces the concept of “limbo diasporas” in the caseof Bosnian refugees in Sweden through reflection and linkage with the aforementioned concepts. Thepaper ends with some recommendations and open questions on social rehabilitation and ethnic healingas well as some general conclusions.
The history of mankind has been plagued by an almost continuous chain of various armed conflicts - local, regional, national and global - that have caused horrendous damage to the social and physical fabric of cities. The tragedy of millions deprived by war still continues. This study sets out to understand the nature of reconstruction after war in the light of recent armed conflicts. It attempts to catalogue and discuss the tasks involved in the process of reconstruction planning by establishing a conceptual framework of the main issues in the reconstruction process. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina is examined in detail and on the whole acts as the leit-motif of the whole dissertation and positions reconstruction in the broader context of sustainable development. The study is organized into two parts that constitute the doctoral aggregate dissertation – a combining of papers with an introductory monograph. In this case the introductory monograph is an extended one and there are six papers that follow. Both sections can be read on their own merits but also constitute one entity.
The rebuilding of war-devastated countries and communities can be seen as a series of nonintegrated activities carried out (and often imposed) by international agencies and governments, serving political and other agendas. The result is that calamities of war are often accompanied by the calamities of reconstruction without any regard to sustainable development. The body of knowledge related to post-conflict reconstruction lacks a strong and cohesive theory. In order to better understand the process of reconstruction we present a qualitative inquiry based on the Grounded Theory Method developed originally by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967). This approach utilizes a complex conceptualization with empirical evidence to produce theoretical structure. The results of process have evolved into the development of a conceptual model, called SCOPE (Sustainable Communities in Post-conflict Environments).
This study proposes both a structure within which to examine post-conflict reconstruction and provides an implementation method. We propose to use the SCOPE model as a set of strategy, policy and program recommendations to assist the international community and all relevant decision-makers to ensure that the destruction and carnage of war does not have to be followed by a disaster of post-conflict reconstruction. We also offer to provide a new foundation and paradigm on post-conflict reconstruction, which incorporates and integrates a number of approaches into a multidisciplinary and systems thinking manner in order to better understand the complexity and dependencies of issues at hand. We believe that such a systems approach could better be able to incorporate the complexities involved and would offer much better results than the approaches currently in use.
The final section of this study returns to the fact that although it is probably impossible to produce universal answers, we desperately need to find commonalities amongst different postconflict reconstruction settings in order to better deal with the reconstruction planning in a more dynamic, proactive, and sustainable manner.
Ways of organizing matter to circulate longer in societies are gaining much political and business interest. Simultaneously, research has seen an upsurge. In this chapter we argue that this focus on circulating matter is welcome, but that the practice of Circular Economy, might greenwash destructive industrial modern production. Current research into Circular Economy is mainly done at a large industrial scale, thereby focusing on re-circulating waste into resources. We propose that research needs also to be done on a more human, down to earth, scale in which forms of Social Entrepreneurship and Ecopreneurship might help show how to organize transitional agency towards living within planetary boundaries. From this perspective decentralized and small-scale solutions can be illuminated that will be part of re-designing systems, making circular flows not only focusing on waste, but also display choices about what matter could circulate more and what should not.
Studies of the "stated preferences" of households generally report public and political opposition by urban commuters to congestion pricing. It is thought that this opposition inhibits or precludes tolls and pricing systems that would enhance efficiency in the use of scarce roadways. This paper analyzes the only case in which road pricing was decided by a citizen referendum on the basis of experience with a specific pricing system. The city of Stockholm introduced a toll system for seven months in 2006, after which citizens voted on its permanent adoption. We match precinct voting records to resident commute times and costs by traffic zone, and we analyze patterns of voting in response to economic and political incentives. We document political and ideological incentives for citizen choice, but we also find that the pattern of time savings and incremental costs exerts a powerful influence on voting behavior. In this instance, at least, citizen voters behave as if they value commute time highly. When they have experienced first-hand the out-of-pocket costs and time savings of a specific pricing scheme, they are prepared to adopt freely policies that reduce congestion on urban motorways.
Introduction Increasing the energy efficiency of cars, resulting in improved fuel economy, has received attention from time to time in various regions of the world. The main driving forces - today and historically - have been increasing energy prices and concerns about exhaust emissions. Reduced fuel use implies both lower fuel cost and lower emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Due to the increasing attention these driving forces receive worldwide, fuel economy improvements form the basis for car manufacturers’ competitiveness in the global market. Fuel economy regulation is no doubt one of the factors that influence, direct and strengthen the fuel economy of cars, and such regulation has hitherto been implemented at regional or national levels. A prominent example is Japan, which plays a dominant role in the car industry while also having a strong tradition of fuel economy regulation. The purpose of this chapter is to explain how the development of fuel economy regulation for cars in Japan was achieved. This is contrasted with corresponding regulation in the United States and the European Union (EU). Implications of the regulations for the Japanese car industry are proposed, and other potentially influential factors are discussed. The data used for analysis are collected through related documents, including official government reports and policy papers by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and research institutes, as well as interviews conducted with government officials and the car industry. First, this chapter looks at how the decision process of Japanese fuel economy regulations, which can be characterized as ‘co-regulation’ between the government and the industry, has backed up the development. Second, we analyse how fuel economy regulation of Japan’s major car export markets - the United States and the EU - has encouraged sustainable technological innovation in the Japanese industry. Third, other influential factors than fuel economy regulation, such as the oil price, regulation of pollutant emissions, economic incentives and industry strategies, are discussed. Finally, some concluding remarks summarize the key points of the chapter.
In the absence of formal thresholds for representation, the constituency size will determine the effective threshold. In Swedish municipality elections there are (as of 2014) no formal thresholds, but the constituency sizes vary considerably. This note mainly presents the two mathematical formulas of interest for the calculation of effective thresholds. The voting share needed to get one seat under maximally charitable conditions (with respect to the distribution of votes among the other parties) is given by equation (7), where d is the first divisor (currently set to 1.4 in the Swedish system), M is the number of seats, and n is the number of parties. The voting share needed to be guaranteed to have one seat is given by equation (13). There is a threshold in between these extremes, a threshold at which there is a 50 % probability of winning one seat and a 50 % probability of winning none. For sufficiently large values of M, it is reasonable to believe that equation (5) provides a good approximation for the 50 % probability threshold.
A problem for a circular economy, embedded in its policies, tools, technologies andmodels, is that it is driven by the interests and needs of producers, rather than customersand users. This opinion paper focuses on an alternative form of governance—agreements,which thanks to their bargaining approach brings actors from across the value chain intothe policy process. The purpose of this opinion paper is to uncover and analyse thepotential of such agreements for a circular economy. Circular agreements aim at increasingthe circulation of materials and are an emerging form of political governance withinthe EU. These agreements have different names, involve different actors and govern indifferent ways. However, circular agreements seem to work when other types of regulationsfail to establish circulation. These agreements bring actors together and offer aplatform for negotiating how advantages and disadvantages can be redistributed betweenactors in a way that is more suitable for a circular economy. However, circular agreementsare dependent on other policy instruments to work and can generate a free-rider problemwith uninvolved actors. The agreements may also become too detailed and long term,which leads to problem shifting and lock-ins, respectively.
COVID-19 is a disaster. Over two million people have died. And, as noted by Anthony Oliver-Smith (1999), disasters are never merely natural, but also social. There is much debate about how to organize societies to protect citizens from the pandemic, without too much negative impact on citizens, and there are large uncertainties, both in relation to the overall strategies (for example, the level of societal shut-down) and the practical guidelines (Manderson and Levine 2020). Despite the uncertainties, measures to tackle the pandemic are presented to citizens as clear and indisputable. In the space between uncertainty and clarity, there is room for the political, in terms of, for example, lobbyism. Although many things have stopped during the pandemic, politics have not (Hannah et al. 2020). Many of the strategies presented as medically valid are inherently political (Esposito 2020); for example, based on political trade-offs between rich and poor, young and old, white and black, health and the economy (Horton 2020). Or, the political conflict this Intervention will focus on, between health and the environment.
Den 17 december infaller årsdagen för beslutet om allmän rösträtt. Förhandlingsprocessen kan lära oss mycket kring hur vår tids stora polariserande utmaning – klimatfrågan – bör hanteras.
Oförmågan att förebygga avfall leder till att miljövinsten i effektiviseringar äts upp av de växande avfallsmängderna. Tvärtemot vad som behövs för att minska klimatpåverkan och miljögifterna, skriver bland andra miljöstrateg Nils Johansson.
This study examined possibilities of preforming gerrymandering within Swedish municipal elections before 2015, when new regulations contributing to guaranteeing a proportional seat allocation and thereby eliminating the risk of gerrymandering altogether were introduced. As the configuration of the districting problems in Swedish elections follows that of spatial unit allocation, these problems could be modelled as integer-programming problems including previously formulated constraints guaranteeing necessary geometrical and topological properties of districts as well as additional objectives and constraints promoting desired seat allocations. For several of the examined municipalities districts solutions with none-suspicious shapes and a more desirable seat allocation for the considered parties given voting outcomes from the 2014 elections were found. The implication of these results for Swedish municipal elections prior to 2015 as well as other elections using similar seat allocation procedures would however be highly dependent on the ability to make detailed and accurate predictions of voting outcomes prior to actual elections.
Strong representative democracies rely on educated, informed, and active citizenry to provide oversight of the government. We present Connect 2 Congress (C2C), a novel, high temporal-resolution and interactive visualization of legislative behavior. We present the results of focus group and domain expert interviews that demonstrate how different stakeholders use C2C for a variety of investigative activities. The evaluation provided evidence that users are able to support or reject claims made by candidates and conduct free-form, low-cost, exploratory analysis into the legislative behavior of representatives across time periods.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused great disruption to the service sector, and it has, in turn, adapted by implementing measures that reduce physical contact among employees and users; examples include home-office work and the setting of occupancy restrictions at indoor locations. The design of services in the context of a pandemic requires balancing between two objectives: (i) special measures must be implemented to maintain physical separation among people to reduce the risk of infection, and (ii) these sanitary measures also reduce process capacity, thereby increasing the waiting times of users. We study this problem in the context of election processes, in which balancing waiting time with public safety is of first order relevance to ensuring voter turnout, using as a real-world application the Chilean 2020 national referendum. Analyzing this problem requires a multidisciplinary approach that consists of integrating randomized experiments to measure how voters weigh infection risk relative to waiting time and stochastic modeling/discrete event simulation to prescribe recommendations for the service design—specifically setting capacity limits to trade off between overcrowding and process efficiency. Overall, our results shows that infection risk is an important factor affecting voter turnout during a pandemic and that capacity limits can be a useful design tool to balance these risks with other service quality measures. Some of these findings were considered in the guidelines that Servel provided to manage capacity and voter arrival patterns at voting centers.
ABSTRACT. The United States has sometimes been called a reluctant Arctic actor, but during its chairmanship ofthe Arctic Council (2015–2017) the US engaged as an active proponent of Arctic cooperation, using the region as ashowcase for strong global climate policy. This paper placesUSArctic policy development during the Obama presidencywithin a longer time perspective, with a focus on how US interests towards the region have been formulated in policiesand policy statements. The paper uses frame analysis to identify overarching discourses and discusses the extent towhich certain themes and political logics recur or shift over time. It highlights economic development and nationalcompetitiveness as a prominent recurring frame, but also that the policy discourse has moved from nation-building andmilitary security towards a broader security perspective, with attention to energy supply for the US, and more recentlyalso to the implications of climate change. Over time, there is a clear shift from reluctance towards Arctic regionalcooperation to embracing it. Moreover, it highlights how different stands in relation to climate change have affectedArctic cooperation in the past and may do so again in the future.