How can differences in per capita household electricity consumption across African countries be understood? Based on theories that highlight the importance of democracy and institutional quality for provision of public goods, the aim of the paper is to analyse the degree to which the level of per capita household electricity consumption in African countries can be attributed to the countries’ democratic status and their institutional quality. We rely on regression analysis employing a pooled data set for 44 African countries over the time period 1996–2009. The analysis shows that democracy and institutional quality both have significant positive effects on per capita household consumption of electricity. Our results have implications for how energy sector reforms are promoted in developing countries. At a more general level they illustrate that institution-building policy efforts are relevant also in areas where contemporary debates have tended to primarily centre on economic development, financial prerequisites and ownership issues.

Currently, politicians, university representatives, scholars and leading NGOs share a strong belief in the ability of educational systems to generate positive attitudes to sustainable development (SD) among citizens, with the idea of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as perhaps the most apparent expression of this conviction. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether ESD might have the intended effects on teacher education students. More specifically, we account for the results from a panel study on the effects of a course on SD held in autumn 2010 at the University of Gothenburg (n = 323) on teacher education students. The surveys consisted of questions about the students’ concerns about various issues, including issues related to SD, and their attitudes towards SD and views of moral obligations to contributing to SD. The study included a control group (n = 97) consisting of students from the teacher-training programme at University West, which had not and did not include ESD. We find positive effects of ESD on almost all attitudes and perceptions, including e.g., personal responsibility in relation to SD and willingness to contribute to SD, while there is no noticeable effect in the control group. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of our results for the idea of ESD in teacher training programmes at Swedish higher education institutions.

Centrum för utbildning och forsknings inom samhällsvetenskaperna (CUFS) fick i juni 2000 uppdraget av Länsarbetsnämnden i Norrbotten att utvärdera den sista fasen, implementeringen, i arbetet med Jämvägenprojektet. Syftet med undersökningen var att undersöka om inställningen till jämställdhet förändrats sedan starten av Jämvägenprojektet och efter genomförd studiecirkel. Rapporten bygger på en jämförelse mellan en enkätundersökning av samtliga anställda inom AMV i Norrbotten 1999 och 2001. Av samtliga anställda inom AMV i Norrbotten deltog i genomsnitt drygt 80 procent i de obligatoriska cirkelträffarna. Närvaron mellan de olika kontoren varierade stort, från 52 procent till 100 procent. En lyckad implementering innebär att resultatet efter genomförandet av ett beslut eller införande av en policy blir det som avsågs när beslutet fattades. För att uppnå en lyckad implementering finns fyra kriterier uppställda av de amerikanska statsvetarna Ham & Hill. För det första måste bakgrunden till beslutet vara tydlig och de som ska genomföra beslutet måste vara motiverade att göra det. För det andra måste den direkta styrningen vara tydlig och rak så att det inte finns oklarheter om var ansvaret ligger. För det tredje måste utomståendes påverkan på dem som ska genomföra beslutet förhindras och för det fjärde måste beslutsfattarna kunna kontrollera implementeringsaktörerna. Det har skett en förändring hos de anställdas inställning till jämställdhet mellan de två mätperioderna. Om skillnaden har skett enbart på grund av cirkelutbildningen går inte att säga men utbildningen har haft betydelse. Det finns en ökad styrka i uppfattningen att vägledning fungerar som ett redskap för att minska den könssegregerade arbetsmarknaden. Även vad gäller synen på jämställdhet i sig har det skett en förändring. Uppfattningen att det krävs en medveten insats för att ändra det befintlliga könsmönstret på arbetsmarknaden har vunnit i styrka; den könsuppdelade arbetsmarknaden måste bekämpas med träget jämställdhetsarbete. Nyckelpersoner för att uppnå en lyckad implementering är cheferna ute på de olika kontoren i länet. Chefen är den person som sätter normen för arbetet och vilka värderingar som är viktiga. Det är därför angeläget att chefen är positivt inställd till Jömvägenprojektet. Det är en kluven bild som cheferna ger i undersökningen. I intervjuer uppger cheferna ett intresse och lägger stor vikt vid Jämvägenprojektet, men i enkätsvaren framkommer en annan bild. Cheferna är den grupp som i stor omfattning anser att jämställdheten redan är förverkligad och att det därför inte finns något behov av ett Jämvägenprojekt. Uppdragsgivare: Länsarbetsnämnden i Norrbottens län

This article investigates the dual role - exemplified by the ideal-types of the consumer and the citizen - individuals' face in contemporary environmental policy. As crowding-out theory highlights the implications of using ‘wrong' incentives or controlling means, examining the match between policy and those value-systems guiding individuals' decision-making process in practice should indeed be a relevant undertaking. Sweden provides the empirical example for the article, in which a text analysis of policy documents is compared with the results of a mail-out survey to 4000 individuals in four different counties. The article finds that external motivations are perceived as being highly relevant for the promotion of ecological sustainability in Sweden and, thus, that the notion of the consumer-role as guiding individuals' behaviour in the environmental field is rather strong. However, at the same time people tend to ascribe the motivational values included in the Self-transcendence cluster (altruism) a far greater importance as guiding principles in life than the opposing values of Self-enhancement (egoism), indicating that the citizen-role indeed is important to account for in policy-making. Hence, clearly there is a mismatch between Sweden's contemporary policy documents and the general value orientation held by Swedish people in general.

This article investigates the dual role – exemplified by the ideal types of the consumer and the citizen – individuals face in the contemporary environmental policy context. As crowding-out theory highlights the implications of using the ‘wrong’ incentives, examining the match between policy and the value systems guiding individuals' decision-making process in practice is a relevant undertaking. Sweden provides the empirical context for the article, in which official environmental policy-discourse in Sweden is compared with the results of a mail-out survey to 4,000 individuals in four different counties. It is suggested that external motivations are perceived as highly relevant for the promotion of ecological sustainability, so the consumer element as a motivating feature of individuals' behaviour in the environmental field is indeed of considerable importance. However, at the same time people tend to ascribe far greater importance to the motivational values included in the self-transcendence cluster (altruism) as guiding principles in life than to the opposing values of self-enhancement (egoism), indicating that the citizen-role is also important to take into account in policy design. It is concluded that there is a mismatch between the content of Sweden's policy documents and the general value orientation held by the Swedish citizenry.

It is widely assumed that stakeholder participation has great potential to improve the perceived legitimacy of natural resource management (NRM) and that the deliberative-democratic qualities of participatory procedures are central to the prospects of success. However, attempts to measure the actual effects of deliberation on the perceived legitimacy of participatory NRM are rare. This article examines the links between deliberation and legitimacy in participatory NRM empirically by tracing the determinants of stakeholders’ level of policy support and their views about procedural fairness. The study uses statistical methods to analyse survey data from a state-led initiative to develop new plans for ecosystem-based coastal and marine management through a participatory approach in five coastal areas in Sweden. We find that the perceived quality of deliberation had a positive impact on these aspects of legitimacy. However, both policy support and perceived procedural fairness were mainly driven by instrumental-substantive considerations rather than deliberative-democratic qualities of the process.

Vägvisaren är en handlingsplan för Norrbottens utveckling inför 2000-talet och markerar slutfasen i utvecklingsprojektet Strategi 95. Projektet har gemensamt drivits av Norrbottens läns landsting, Kommunförbundet i Norrbotten och Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län. Även Högskolan i Luleå (nuvarande Luleå tekniska universitet) och Länsarbetsnämnden har medverkat. Denna rapport kan ses som en första tentativ uppföljning av Vägvisaren. Uppdragsgivare: Landstinget, Kommunförbundet, Länsstyrelsen och Länsarbetsnämnden i Norrbottens län

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) represents a comprehensive approach to better govern the environment that also illustrates the collaborative trend in policy and public administration. The need for stakeholder involvement and collaboration is strongly articulated, yet how and for what purposes collaboration would be effective remains largely untested. We address this gap by developing and evaluating a set of hypotheses specifying how certain patterns of collaborations among actors affect their joint ability to accomplish EBM. Content analyses of management plans drawn from five EBM planning processes in Sweden are combined with analyses of the collaborative networks through which these plans have been developed. Our results indicate that system thinking and the ability to integrate across different management phases are favored by collaborations between different kinds of actors, and by project leaders being centrally located in the networks. We also find that dense substructures of collaboration increase the level of specificity in the plans in regards to explicating constraints on human activities. Having many collaborative ties does however not enhance the overall level of specificity. Our results also show that different network characteristics can give rise to similar EBM outcomes. This observed equifinality suggests there is no single blueprint for well-performing collaborative networks. 

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has become a key instrument of contemporary environmental policy and practice. Given the increasingly important role of EBM, there is an urgent need for improved analytical approaches to assess if and to what extent EBM has been accomplished in any given case. Drawing on the vast literature on EBM, we identify five key ecosystem aspects for assessment. By linking these aspects to four phases of management, we develop an interdisciplinary, analytical framework that enables a high-resolution and systematic assessment of the degree of specificity and integration of ecosystem aspects in an EBM. We then apply the framework to evaluate five coastal EBM initiatives in Sweden, four on the Baltic coast and one on the west coast. Our results demonstrate our framework’s usefulness for in-depth and continuous assessments of processes aiming for EBM, and also provide an empirical basis for inferences about the key challenges for successful EBM.

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.

Public participation in local water councils is one method to involve different actors in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive. In this study we investigate which beliefs explain why the public participate and also how motives to participate are related to willingness to comply with decisions related to the water management framework. In total 910 respondents answered a web survey regarding their participation in the council work. Structural equation modelling was conducted with willingness to comply and motives to participate as the main dependent latent constructs. Other included latent constructs were perceived need for change, fairness, trust, and social- and personal norms. The results show that motives to participate did not have an effect on willingness to comply. Perceived need for change had indirect effects on nearly all latent constructs in the model and personal norms and social norms (through personal norms) had an effect on willingness to comply. The results are discussed in the context of water management methods.

Review of Anarchy and the Environment edited by J. Samuel Barkin and George E. Shamaugh. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. ISBN 0 7914 4183 0

Review of Krantz Lindgren, Petra: Att färdas som man lär? : om miljömedvetenhet och bilåkande. 2001

Review of: Protecting the commons. A framework for resource management in the Americas Edited by Joanna Burger, Elinor Ostrom, Richard B. Norgaard, David Policansky and Bernard D. Goldstein, Island Press, Washington DC, 2001, ISBN 1-55963-738-2

Review ofPeter Rutland (ed.), Business and the State in Contemporary Russia. Oxford and Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001

The role of common property in industrialised society raises a number of questions relevant to constitutional and democratic theory and policy. These questions are discussed here with reference to the current situation of the Swedish Forest Commons. It is shown that commons which have survived for more than one hundred years have difficulties in handling the entrenchment of the principles of liberal democracy, even though their existence is ultimately protected by the liberal democratic state. With reference to Giddens' (1984) theory of structuring and Kiser and Ostrom's (1982) meta-theoretical framework, this article challenges the theory that the constitution forms an institutional hierarchy by restraining collective and operational rules, suggesting rather that lower level rules change and adapt independently. It subsequently tackles the problem of how to identify appropriately the constitution of the commons. Finally it stresses that, despite the fact that the State (the Leviathan [2] ) guarantees the existence of the commons, one of their means of survival is to keep away from the State.

An important task for policy evaluation is to develop methods that are based on the fact that political power is fragmented and that every policy area is complex. This article demonstrates, using an empirical example, how different strands of the policymaking process are related to different logics of evaluation. Also discussed is how these differences may result in quite opposite conclusions about the possible failure or success of single programmes. However, it is concluded that policy research does not have to abandon the idea of rationality and adopt a more postmodern or hermeneutic line of analysis. Policy evaluation is still, it is argued, a matter of finding relevant units of analysis, and in contemporary society these units are networks rather than political-administrative entities. Thus, in order to be able to scrutinize and understand such processes of policy creation, policy evaluation must adopt a non-hierarchical attitude and this requires a bottom-up methodology.

An important contribution to the policy sciences, and to interorganizational research in particular, has been the introduction of the so-called policy network approach. Despite the fact that this approach has produced a multitude of concepts, it still lacks a theoretical scaffold. In this article it is argued that simply to refer to something called "network theory" is an unsatisfactory solution. It is suggested that one way of advancing the policy network approach is to apply collective action theory and explicitly regard different empirical appearances of network concepts as expressions of collective action. Six tentative building blocks of such a theory are suggested. it is further argued that the policy network approach would benefit from incorporation into a broader analytical framework such as the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Finally, it is concluded that such an incorporation would advance our ability to understand the processes of policymaking and thus to fulfill one of the old commitments of policy analysis, namely to contribute to the refinement of policy making processes in society.

La ciencia política, particularmente el enfoque de la red de políticas, está experimentando un aumento de nuevos estudios y conceptos. La abundancia del es resultado del ineludiblemente enfoque multidisciplinario de la ciencia política y de nuestra ambición de superar el análisis tradicional de la ciencia política. Sin embargo, los conceptos del campo se están desarrollando con tanta rapidez que el surgimiento de los nuevos híbridos y mutaciones amenazan con confunidr y sobre-complicar en lugar de proporcionarnos claridad, y como consecuencia la mejora acumulativa y el desarrollo de la teoría se ven obstaculizados. Estas consecuencias imprevistas están íntimamente asociadas con errores de estiramiento conceptual, es decir, utilizando conceptos valiosos con un significado claro para referirse a fenómenos inaplicables, haciendo mal uso y disminuyendo el valor de nuestras herramientas conceptuales. En la ciencia política, esto es también el caso de las herramientas analíticas centrales, marcos conceptuales, modelos y teorías. Por lo tanto, aunque la formulación de políticas puede ser desordenada, si esperamos escapar de la supuesta parálisis en la ciencia política, no podemos permitirnos tolerar las inexactitudes actuales del estiramiento conceptual.

Reviewed Work: Business and the State in Contemporary Russia by Peter Rutland.

The Swedish forest commons have survived for more than one hundred years; no deforestation has been observed and the total amount of biomass is increasing. The forests are regarded by experts as well managed both in terms of efficiency and with regard to the preservation of biodiversity. Compared with other types of ownership the commons have a very special organization. The base consists of 25000 shareholders. This is a medieval pattern of ownership that seems to survive; moreover, it seems to be quite prosperous within the realm of modern society with its highly competitive forest industries. Three main explanations are discussed: the commons' conscious attempts to reduce transaction costs, their general inventiveness in adjusting to changed circumstances, and their acclimatization to the logic of the negotiated economy characterized by fuzzy borders between different sectors.

This paper described the institutional functioning of commonly owned forests in Sweden. A total of 33 common forests were designated in 1861 and have been regulated by the same legislation ever since. Shares in the commons were determined by shares in local arable land and benefits to shareholders have included cash payments, private subsidies and local infrastructure. The common forests have competed successfully in timber production with large-scale timber companies, which the author ascribed to their low transaction costs. They also scored highly on three of five criteria of institutional performance. Overall, their success might be due to their efficient integration into, rather than separation from, the formal economy.

Review of Barkin, J Samuel and George E. Shamaugh (eds.) (1999) Anarchy and the environment. Albany, New York, State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-4183-0

Russia's forest resources are enormous, but despite almost ten years of transition, problems are still immense, in terms of commercial output and with respect to forest management. This article suggests that one way of changing the situation is to introduce community management of forests. Using the Swedish forest commons as an example, this article argues that such a change in property rights will provide an alternative to massive privatization of the forests and to the undesirable continuation or strengthening of state forest management. Finally, it is concluded that such an introduction of new property rights regimes will not provide the solution to the problems, but rather will contribute to the establishment of a better institutional framework in the Russian forest sector