Sverker Jagers
University of Gothenburg, Political Science, Faculty Member
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Research Interests: Politics and Citizenship
As the discourses of ecological sustainability point towards the active involvement of individuals in the environmental work as an important prerequisite for targeting the sources of environmental degradation, one of the main foci for... more
As the discourses of ecological sustainability point towards the active involvement of individuals in the environmental work as an important prerequisite for targeting the sources of environmental degradation, one of the main foci for contemporary environmental policy and political theory is the need for comprehensive individual lifestyle-changes. Within political theory an Ecological Citizenship, reinterpreting the traditional state/individual relationship by straddling the private – public; national – global; and present – future divides, has been suggested a valuable approach to realising a personal responsibility for the environment. Empirical research analysing the prospects for ecological citizenship to function as a route towards individual environmental responsibility is, however, to date lacking in the literature. In this paper we elaborate on how the theory of ecological citizenship can be made empirically operational. We also report preliminary findings from a survey of 3 000 Swedish inhabitants and analyse to what extent the Swedish public fulfil the requirements of different aspects of ecological citizenship theory.
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ObjectiveWhile trust is proposed as a key concept to understand people's compliance in natural resource governance, research would benefit from being more precise. Our aim is to test whether more specific survey measures of... more
ObjectiveWhile trust is proposed as a key concept to understand people's compliance in natural resource governance, research would benefit from being more precise. Our aim is to test whether more specific survey measures of people's tendency to violate rules and the degree to which law enforcing rangers are seen as corrupt trumps more commonly used items on intra‐personal trust and trust in institutions.MethodsWe analyze an original survey of residents within the boundaries of the Great Limpopo Park, straddling Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.ResultsWhile general trust items predict compliance intentions in a first model, these effects largely disappear when we introduce more specific measures. We find consistent negative effects from perceived corruption among rangers. We also report negative effects from perceptions of other people's noncompliant behavior.ConclusionCompliance to natural resource regulations hinges on specific perceptions of how rule enforcing ag...
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Understanding how preferences for public policy instruments shape policy support helps policymakers to design policies that begin to tackle large‐scale and complex problems, such as climate change. Climate change policies generate both... more
Understanding how preferences for public policy instruments shape policy support helps policymakers to design policies that begin to tackle large‐scale and complex problems, such as climate change. Climate change policies generate both local and global costs and benefits, which affect the public's policy preferences. In this article we investigate the role of perceived conditional cooperation and distributive concerns on climate policy attitude formation. We identify a range of climate policies and test public opinion for adoption of these policies at different scales of government. The important theoretical distinction is the scale‐driven distributional nature of policy costs and benefits as well as concerns regarding the cooperation of other actors. We use data from Sweden and a conjoint experimental design where we vary level of government, type of policy, and the targeted group. We find evidence that people support policies when costs are shared broadly. We also find that su...
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Carbon taxes are frequently advocated as a means of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet their political feasibility remains a challenge. To enhance their political appeal, carbon tax proponents have proposed revenue recycling as... more
Carbon taxes are frequently advocated as a means of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet their political feasibility remains a challenge. To enhance their political appeal, carbon tax proponents have proposed revenue recycling as a means of alleviating public concern with this instrument's visible costs. Analyzing data from identical survey‐experiments administered in the United States, Canada, and Germany, we examine the extent to which returning revenues to the public has the potential to broaden the political acceptability of carbon taxes across ideological and national contexts. While public opinion is sensitive to the cost attributes of carbon taxes, we find that in some cases, opposition to carbon taxes can be offset by a reduction in income taxes. However, these effects tend to be modest in size, limited to some ideological groups, and varied across countries. Moreover, we demonstrate that fairness perceptions are a crucial mechanism linking revenue recycling to c...
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The mining industries of Sweden and Finland currently face several policy issues around investment, stakeholder involvement, and sustainability. Since the two countries garnered significant attention during the mining boom, research from... more
The mining industries of Sweden and Finland currently face several policy issues around investment, stakeholder involvement, and sustainability. Since the two countries garnered significant attention during the mining boom, research from a social sciences perspective grew significantly. One approach to understanding how these issues in Sweden and Finland compare to international examples is through an analysis of the policy development framework. Looking at three factors—institutions, actors, and process—gives a broad overview of the imminent challenges in both Sweden and Finland and potential lessons from existing research that point to similar problems and their solutions. As the mining operations continue to sit at the center of different values, capable policy is required.
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ObjectiveThis article explores how different motives affect behavior, and attempts to explain how the causal chain of values and beliefs forms our understanding of and motives for private‐sphere environmentally significant behaviors... more
ObjectiveThis article explores how different motives affect behavior, and attempts to explain how the causal chain of values and beliefs forms our understanding of and motives for private‐sphere environmentally significant behaviors (ESBs). As a point of departure, we postulate that traditional models focusing primarily on individual‐level motivation as a driver for ESB should benefit significantly from making a distinction in the dependent variable between: (1) behaviors that are explicitly pro‐environmental, judging both by their outcomes and the individual's stated motives for undertaking them; (2) behaviors that have a positive environmental impact but that are connected to motives other than environmental ones; as well as (3) behaviors where both environmental and other motives coincide as drivers for ESB.MethodsIn order to answer our research questions, we use survey data collected from a random sample from the Swedish population register. The main dependent variable is th...
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ABSTRACT An increasing body of literature suggests that acceptance of environmental policy instruments tends to change along with increased experience of the same. Among the more popular examples of this is the growing number of... more
ABSTRACT An increasing body of literature suggests that acceptance of environmental policy instruments tends to change along with increased experience of the same. Among the more popular examples of this is the growing number of congestion pricing initiatives emerging around the world. In several cases, the acceptability of these projects among the public has been relatively low before implementation, but then acceptance has increased as experience of the project has grown. The question is just how, and in particular, why? That is, what is it really that experience does to people's propensity to accept initially quite unpopular measures? In this article, we analyze how the relationship between political trust, policy-specific beliefs (PSBs), and public support for policy tools is moderated or affected by people's personal experiences of those policy tools. On the basis of the experience of previous research, we test the way in which PSBs, institutional trust, and the legitimacy of the political decision-making process affect public attitudes toward a policy tool. In addition—and consistent with other studies—we expect these effects to be significantly reduced post-implementation, as people gain first-hand experience of a policy tool. More specifically, we theorize that the often emphasized process legitimacy is only valid as a factor driving support before implementation, and that the effect of general institutional trust is replaced by the level of trust specific to the implementing institutions after the introduction of the policy tool. We tested these hypotheses using a natural experiment; that is, by studying public attitudes toward the introduction of congestion fees in the Swedish city of Gothenburg both before and after their introduction. By doing so, we were able to comprehensively analyze both the drivers behind public sentiments toward congestion charges and how these mechanisms transform as people are exposed to the costs and benefits of the policy tool in practice. Among other things, we found that with regard to fairness and environmental effectiveness, there is a clear symmetry in our results. The level of acceptance increased most noticeably among those who experienced that the environment was improved by the implemented tax, or that the system turned out to be fairer than expected. However, the opposite is also the case. Thus, among those experiencing that the environment was not improved, or that the system appeared to be less fair than expected, the level of acceptance decreased significantly after implementation. These results may have important policy implications.
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AimGeo‐referenced species occurrence records are a prime example of biodiversity data and a cornerstone of biodiversity research. Yet, their availability depends on non‐biological factors, including the political framework in the region... more
AimGeo‐referenced species occurrence records are a prime example of biodiversity data and a cornerstone of biodiversity research. Yet, their availability depends on non‐biological factors, including the political framework in the region of collection. Here we present Bio‐Dem (www.bio‐dem.surge.sh), an open‐source software to explore the relationship between the availability of species occurrence records and the political framework in countries worldwide and through time.LocationGlobal.TaxonAny.MethodsBio‐Dem accesses the number of occurrence records available from countries worldwide from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (www.gbif.org) and socio‐political information from these countries from the Varieties of Democracy database (www.v‐dem.net) as well as information on colonial history from the Issue Correlates of War Project.ResultsBio‐Dem is available as a free graphical user interface web application at www.bio‐dem.surge.sh. Through three interactive graphs, Bio‐Dem e...
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National governments are the main actors responsible for mapping and protecting their biodiversity, but countries differ in their capacity, willingness, and effectiveness to do so. We quantify the global biodiversity managed by different... more
National governments are the main actors responsible for mapping and protecting their biodiversity, but countries differ in their capacity, willingness, and effectiveness to do so. We quantify the global biodiversity managed by different regime types and developed a tool to explore the links between level of democracy and other key socio-economic variables with the number of natural history specimens registered within country boundaries. Using this tool, distinct and previously unknown patterns emerge around the world, that urge for increased collaboration between the natural and social sciences to further explore these patterns and their underlying processes.
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This paper approaches provision of affordable and reliable electricity in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as a case of public good provision. It aims to contribute to our understanding of how regime type and the quality of... more
This paper approaches provision of affordable and reliable electricity in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) as a case of public good provision. It aims to contribute to our understanding of how regime type and the quality of implementing institutions within political systems affect the prerequisites for successful electrification in SIDS. More specifically, we analyse the independent and interdependent effects of level of democracy and control of corruption on per capita household electricity consumption in SIDS, using data from 34 SIDS over the period 1996–2009. The results show that although the independent effects of level of democracy and control of corruption are sensitive to model specification, these two factors do have an interdependent impact on per capita household electricity consumption: democratization has positive effects on provision of electricity to the general population only when there is a certain level of corruption control in place. The results imply a) that it is important for policy actors to acknowledge the interaction between regime type and the quality of implementing institutions, and b) when planning electrification projects in SIDS, it is necessary to have information about the social and political context in order to design the most effective projects.
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EU climate change policy is pursued in a new international context as EU Member States are about to implement the Paris Agreement. The authors of this chapter argue that the EU presented a strong, united front in the process leading up to... more
EU climate change policy is pursued in a new international context as EU Member States are about to implement the Paris Agreement. The authors of this chapter argue that the EU presented a strong, united front in the process leading up to the Paris Agreement, but there are clear differences in terms of both ambition and approach in the actual climate change policies of EU member states, which are due to variation in political culture, values, and political institutions. With this in mind, the chapter considers the EU’s role as an actor in climate change policy with regard to its historical role, current position, and future status. The authors begin by examining Europe’s early industrialization, which led to an increase in both economic power and the level of emissions of greenhouse gases. Relying on a variety of statistics, the authors determine that Europe’s position looks very different today, and they emphasize that even though the EU maintains a united front in climate negotiations, climate policy differs widely among EU member states.
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In 2021, governments of 51 countries spent US$697 billion on subsidizing fossil fuels. Removing fossil fuel subsidies is crucial not only for reducing CO2 emissions and making carbon pricing more effective, but also for making more... more
In 2021, governments of 51 countries spent US$697 billion on subsidizing fossil fuels. Removing fossil fuel subsidies is crucial not only for reducing CO2 emissions and making carbon pricing more effective, but also for making more valuable use of government funds. Currently, however, scientific evidence on the scale and scope of public attitudes towards fossil fuel subsidy-removal policies is lacking, yet it is instrumental for gauging political feasibility. Furthermore, previous studies tend to focus on carbon pricing in the developed world only. Here we present a comparative analysis of attitudes towards both carbon taxation and fossil fuel subsidy removal, focusing on five developing countries across four continents. It is found that (1) removing fossil fuel subsidies is not more undesirable than introducing carbon taxation and (2) the public has more-positive attitudes towards subsidy removal if optimal use of the saved fiscal revenues is specified.
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Sammantaget ser vi inget i motdebattorernas argument som talar emot att infora styrmedel, till exempel konsumtionsskatter, inom dessa omraden dar inga stora tekniska losningar finns i sikte, skriver 14 miljo- och energiforskare i... more
Sammantaget ser vi inget i motdebattorernas argument som talar emot att infora styrmedel, till exempel konsumtionsskatter, inom dessa omraden dar inga stora tekniska losningar finns i sikte, skriver 14 miljo- och energiforskare i slutrepliken till sin text om flyg- och kottskatt (26/2).
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2015 was a special year. During a few months the political stars aligned and made it possible for the international community to agree on the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement to limit global warming. Now the... more
2015 was a special year. During a few months the political stars aligned and made it possible for the international community to agree on the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement to limit global warming. Now the signatories need to find ways to implement these agreements, which not only imply a deep decarbonization of the economy but must also meet the Sustainable Development Goals. In this article we discuss the importance of pricing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions2 to make this happen. Climate abatement is a truly global public good and so we actually have to have a functioning policy in all countries. Our interest is thus on pricing in all countries but in particular the developing countries that are bigger and most crucial to the struggle for a green transition.