Course Guide
SK2221, Environmental politics and institutions
Course Administrator:
Maria Lilleste (ML)
[email protected]
tel. 031-786 11 82
Teachers
Sverker Jagers (SJ)
Martin Sjöstedt (MS)
Björn Rönnerstrand (BR)
Sebastian Linke (SL)
Simon Matti (SM)
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
tel. 031-786 12 30
tel. 031-786-18 64
tel. 031-786 51 90
tel. 031-786 47 54
tel. 0920-49 10 00
1. Introduction
Due to its typically complex, multi-scale and dynamic character, often including multiple actors,
managing the environment tend to be a challenging task. Thus, an understanding of the mechanisms
behind successful governance of natural resources or the overall environment requires in-depth
knowledge and analysis. Actors’ environmental behaviour is on the one hand explained by factors
such as informal institutions, e.g., what values, norms, beliefs and morals the actors are having, and
on the other hand formal institutions, i.e., how society is organized, both politically and
administratively. This is valid for all actors whether they act as individuals, groups, corporations,
organisations, or political entities. These various informal and formal institutions can never be
overlooked when trying to understand the origin of environmental performance across states,
communities, or resource systems. In addition - and as clearly manifested in the idea of sustainable
development - environmental degradation is closely related to economic and social welfare.
Therefore, the most noticeable environmental problems that we have experienced as of today, spur
from human activities originally aimed at generating social and economic wealth, but where the
environmental erosion gradually (or abruptly) might lead up decreased economic and social
welfare.
The master course, Environmental Politics and Institutions, aims at offering a broad understanding
of the complex conditions under which societies are to act in order to combat environmental
problems. At the same time, it also offers theoretical deepening and methodological application.
Through the course, the students will acquire in-depth knowledge about the political attempts
to cope with several environmental problems related to, e.g., the marine environment, water,
land-use, biodiversity, and various airborne environmental problems including climate change.
Theoretically, the course is primarily founded in social dilemma theory, theories about public
opinion and behaviour, and institutional theory. However, also political theory (principally
distributional theory) has a central role throughout the course.
2. Learning Outcomes
A student who has passed the course will be able to
Knowledge and understanding:
• Show in-depth knowledge about different conceptualisations of environmental
problems, and environmental politics in a comparative perspective.
• Show in-depth knowledge about collective action and social dilemma theory,
including factors generating collective action such as values, attitudes, norms, beliefs,
uncertainty, trust, media and various policy instruments available to create collective
action as well as the challenges associated with the implementation of these policy
instruments.
Skills and abilities
• Compare and critically assess advanced institutional theories and frameworks.
• Use institutional theory to explain the genesis of environmental problems and lack of
collective action, as well as how institutions simultaneously can promote
environmental collective action.
• Through independent work, plan and conduct a minor research project addressing
central aspects of environmental collective action and effectively communicate this
plan..
• Independently produce text in accordance with good academic practice, including
proper citation technique, use of references, and within the given time frame.
Judgement and approach
• Systematize and integrate different theories about formal and informal
institutions’ impact on collective action and environmental behavior.
3. Organization of the Course
The course consists of lectures, seminars, laboratory sessions, individual tutorials, and two written
assignments.
27/3 10.15-13.00 Introduction/Lecture (SJ)




What is the environment?
The geneses of environmental problems
Environmental problems understood as collective action dilemmas
Responses to environmental problems
28/3 13.15-15.00 Lecture (SJ)
 The history of environmental politics
 Environmental politics
 Organization and management
 Policy and policy measures
 The importance of policy acceptance
31/3 10.15-12.00 Lecture: Institutional theory, state-society relations, and environmental
politics (MS)
 Institutions and natural resource management.
 Environmental governance and resilience.
 How do country characteristics affect exploitation patterns? The role of democracy,
corruption, and governance?
 Empirical examples from land and fisheries management.
7/4 12.00 Assignment 1 is handed in on GUL (see separate instructions for Assignment 1)
11/4 10.15-12.00 Seminar discussion on Assignment 1. (MS, SJ)
Preparation for Lectures 18/4 and Role Play 19/4 see the film ‘For cod’s sake’ at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zni6Iy5Q-Ko
18/4 10.15-12.00 & 13.15-15.00 Lecture Fisheries management in the EU + role play
introduction (SL)
• History, institutional design and sustainability failures of the EU’s Common Fisheries
Policy (CFP)
• Science-policy interactions and division of duties between stakeholders within the CFP
• Stakeholder inclusion and the reversal of the burden of proof in EU fisheries management
 Introduction of the role play and homework (preparation of role play, movie)
19/4 9.15-12.00 Role Play Fisheries management in the EU (SL)
20/4 10.15-12.00 Lecture: Trust, reciprocity and reputation to explain voluntary
(environmental) collective action (BR)
• The failure of the standard rational choice prediction for collective action.
• The role of trust, reciprocity and reputation in collective action. Evidence from laboratory
public good experiment.
• From small-scale to large-scale collective action.
21/4 10.15-12.00 Laboratory session (BR)
• Interaction in a common pool resources dilemma
• Altruism, reciprocity, reputation, anonymity, communication
Instructions for the Laboratory session will be posted on GUL.
24/4 13.15-15.00 Lecture (SM)
 Individual-level factors and drivers behind pro-environmental behaviour
 and attitudes
 The significance of personal value orientations, beliefs, and personal
 norms
 How contextual factors affect individual-level mechanisms
26/4 Course paper memo is handed in on GUL (see separate instructions)
28/4 10.15-12.00 Seminar discussion on Course paper memo (BR, MS)
28/4 13.15-15.00 Lecture (SJ)
 Synthesis
 A model of large scale collective action
 Rivaling models
 Discussion
2/5 10.15-12.00 Course paper tutuorial/supervision (BR, MS, SJ)
9/5 10.15-12.00 Course paper tutuorial/supervision (BR, MS, SJ)
23/5 9.15-11.00 Course paper tutuorial/supervision (BR, MS, SJ)
29/5 16.00 Course paper is handed in on GUL
1/6 8.15-12.00 Course paper seminar (BR, MS, SJ)
1/6 12.00- Course evaluation
Course Paper Instructions:
Course paper instructions are to be found on GUL.
4. Schedule
See link:
https://se.timeedit.net/web/gu/db1/schema/riqQX5g6216ZY2Q5Z45w7Y5Z630900566755QY6Q5yo
66X70Y62267Q7Zq6Qo.html
5. List of Literature
Lectures 27/3, 28/3, 28/4
Connelly, J., Smith, G,. Benson, D. and Saunders, C. (2012). Politics and the Environment. From
Theory to Practice. Routledge.
Baumgärtner, S., Becker, C., Faber, M., & Manstetten, R. (2006). Relative and absolute scarcity of
nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation. Ecological
Economics, 59(4), 487-498.
Duus-Otterström, G. & Jagers, S.C. (2012). Identifying burdens of coping with climate change: A
typology of the duties of climate justice. Global Environmental Change Volume 22, Issue 3, Pages
746–753.
Imperial, M.T. & Yandle, T. (2005) Taking Institutions Seriously: Using the IAD Framework to
Analyze Fisheries Policy. Society and Natural Resources, 18:493–509
Jagers, S.C. (2007) Prospect for Green Liberalism. Durham, University Press of America, Chapter
1.
Mansbridge, J. (2014) The role of the state in governing the commons. Environmental Science &
Policy 36 (2014) 8–10.
Ostrom, E. E., Dietz, T. E., Dolšak, N. E., Stern, P. C., Stonich, S. E., & Weber, E. U. (2002). The
drama of the commons. National Academy Press. Chapter 1-2, 4, 6-7, 12-13
Ostrom, E. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, Princeton University Press,
Chapter 1.
Pisano, U. (2012). Resilience and Sustainable Development: Theory of resilience thinking, systems
thinking and adaptive governance. UESDN Quarterly Report N°26, Sept. 2012
Ungaro, S. (2005) Ecological Democracy. International Review of Sociology, 15:2, 293-303.
Lecture 31/3
Agrawal, Arun. 2001. Common Property Institutions and Sustainable Governance of Resources.
World Development 29: 10: 1649-1672.
Becker, Dustin., and Elinor Ostrom. 1995. Human Ecology and Resource Sustainability: The
Importance of Institutional Diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 26: 113-133.
Duit, Andreas., and Victor Galaz. 2008. Governance and complexity—emerging issues for
governance theory. Governance 21:311-335.
Ostrom, E. E., Dietz, T. E., Dolšak, N. E., Stern, P. C., Stonich, S. E., & Weber, E. U. (2002). The
drama of the commons: National Academy Press. Chapter 1-2, 10.
Schlager, Edella., and Elinor Ostrom. 1992. Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A
Conceptual Analysis. Land Economics 68(3): 249-262.
Sjöstedt, Martin. 2013. Horizontal and vertical resource dilemmas in natural resource management:
the case of African fisheries. Fish & Fisheries 14(4): 616-624.
Sjöstedt, M. (2014) ”Enforcement and Compliance in African Fisheries: The Dynamic Interaction
between Ruler and Ruled”. I A. Duit (red.), State and Environment: The Comparative Study of
Environmental Governance. Boston: MIT Press. (Found under documents on GUL)
Sjöstedt, Martin., and Sverker Jagers. 2014. Democracy and the environment revisited: The case of
African fisheries. Marine Policy 43: 143–148.
Sjöstedt, M. 2015. ”Resilience revisited: Taking institutional theory seriously”. Ecology & Society
20(4): 23.
Lecture 18/4 and role play 19/4
Linke, S., Dreyer, M., & Sellke, P. (2011). The Regional Advisory Councils: what is their potential
to incorporate stakeholder knowledge into fisheries governance?. Ambio, 40(2), 133-143.
Gezelius, S. S. (2008). The arrival of modern fisheries management in the North Atlantic: a
historical overview. In Making Fisheries Management Work (pp. 27-40). Springer Netherlands.
Linke, S., & Jentoft, S. (2013). A communicative turnaround: shifting the burden of proof in
European fisheries governance. Marine Policy, 38, 337-345.
Hatchard, J. L., & Gray, T. S. (2014). From RACs to Advisory Councils: Lessons from North Sea
discourse for the 2014 reform of the European Common Fisheries Policy. Marine Policy, 47, 87-93.
Griffin, L. (2009). Scales of knowledge: North Sea fisheries governance, the local fisherman and
the European scientist. Environmental Politics, 18(4), 557-575.
Lecture 20/4 and seminar/laboration 21/4
Gächter, S., et al. (2004). "Trust, voluntary cooperation, and socio-economic background: survey
and experimental evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 55(4): 505-531.
Gächter, S. and B. Herrmann (2009). "Reciprocity, culture and human cooperation: previous
insights and a new cross-cultural experiment." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences 364(1518): 791-806.
Milinski, M., et al. (2002). "Reputation helps solve the ‘tragedy of the commons’." Nature
415(6870): 424-426.
Nowak, M A. & Sigmund (2005). Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 437, 1291-1298.
Ostrom, E. (1998). "A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action:
Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997." The American Political
Science Review 92(1): 1-22.
Ostrom, E. E., Dietz, T. E., Dolšak, N. E., Stern, P. C., Stonich, S. E., & Weber, E. U. (2002). The
drama of the commons. National Academy Press. Chapter 4
Rönnerstrand, B. and K. Andersson Sundell (2015). "Trust, reciprocity and collective action to fight
antibiotic resistance. An experimental approach." Social Science & Medicine 142: 249-255.
Thöni, C., et al. (2012). "Microfoundations of social capital." Journal of Public Economics 96(7):
635-643.
Lecture 24/4
Dunlap R.E., K.D. Van Liere, A.G. Mertig and R.E. Jones (2000), ¹Measuring
Endorsementof the New Ecological Paradigm: A Revised NEP Scale¹, Journal of Social
Issues, 56 (3), 425-442.
Steg, L. and C. Vlek (2009), ¹Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An
Integrative review and research agenda¹, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29,
309-317.
Stern, P. C., T. Dietz, T. Abel, G. A. Guagnano and L. Kalof (1999). A
value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmental concern.
Human Ecology Review, 6: 81-97.
Nordlund, A. and J. Garvill (2002). Value Structures Behind Proenvironmental Behaviour.
Environment and Behaviour, 34(6): 740-756.
Stern, P.C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally
significant behaviour. Journal of Social Issues, 56: 407-424.
6. Assessment
Student performance is assessed through two written assignments: one individually written seminar
paper where various aspects of collective action theory are to be discussed (5 hec) and an individual
final course paper (10 hec).