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- Hedlund, Johanna, 1988-
(författare)
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The environment knows no borders : Investigating the collective challenge of governing policy issue interdependencies
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Many of today’s most pressing environmental problems cross-cut jurisdictional, geographical, and administrative boundaries, creating interdependencies between different locations and between policy issues that no single actor can address alone. In practice, however, environmental policy is still often contained within the traditional responsibilities of the public sector and frequently judged ineffective, particularly in the European context. Whether and how interdependencies are actually associated with collaboration between policy actors has remained difficult to establish. This cumulative thesis focuses on interdependent environmental challenges that policy actors need to manage. Specifically, this thesis describes and analyses policy issue interdependencies and how they align with the collaborations of policy actors. In addition, this thesis explores how policy issue interdependencies can be revealed, concretised, and analysed. Interdependencies are effectively represented by networks, both as conceptual models and as analytical methods. Therefore, the studies in this thesis use a multilevel network model to explore the structural alignment between interdependencies and collaboration through the perspective of institutional fit.This thesis reports findings from two research projects. The first project focuses on policy issue interdependencies relating to regional water degradation. This project describes and analyses these interdependencies in relation to collaborative networks across administrative boundaries (Papers I–III). The second project focuses on climate change impacts that propagate through food trade dependencies. This project contributes insights into the effect of climate change on food trade networks that cross national borders, illustrating a need for global climate adaptation (Paper IV).Paper I introduces a methodological procedure for assessing policy issue interdependencies and develops policy issue networks by identifying overlapping causal relationships between policy issues and their environmental targets. By applying the procedure empirically to water governance, the paper shows that policy issue interdependencies vary in degree and type. Paper II combines the policy issue networks from Paper I with collaborative networks of policy actors in a multilevel network to analyse the impact policy issue interdependencies have on who policy actors select for collaborative partners and to clarify if and how patterns of collaboration among actors are formed. Paper III differentiates reinforcing and counteracting policy issue interdependencies and studies how these impact the perceptions and collaborations of the actors. Paper IV, shifting the focus to the global level, analyses climate change impacts related to food trade dependencies across national borders. Specifically, Paper IV investigates the impact of climate change on the structure of global food trade networks and therefore contributes a baseline scenario analysis for future studies that investigate policy issue interdependencies and policy actor collaborations on the global level.
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| 2. |
- Hedlund, Johanna
(författare)
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No environmental problem is an island : Aligning networks of transboundary collaboration to complex policy issue interdependencies
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In recent times, societal and environmental problems have been exhibiting a growing interconnectedness and interdependency. Based on the idea of institutional fit, interdependency on a problem level should be preferably matched with governance arrangements for effective problem-solving. Still, we know little about the governance of consequential interdependencies across societal and environmental problems. Moreover, knowledge on how the governance of such interdependencies can be effective is even more limited. In governance contexts, actors break down societal and environmental problems into specific policy issues. When actors engage in policy issues that exhibit interdependency with other policy issues, such as resource extraction and environmental protection, they must seek governance arrangements that go beyond framings of single policy issues as detached from others. Transboundary, collaborative forms of governance are often undertaken by actors as a response to interdependencies between policy issues. This combination of interdependencies and transboundary dimensions consolidates high complexity. Despite extensive literature on collaboration as a governance form and a growing body of research on interdependency between policy issues, few studies integrate these to inform research on the effectiveness of such complex governance systems, where both perspectives are combined. Nor do such studies provide empirical evidence of why the effects of transboundary arrangements for governing interdependencies matter. Without such knowledge, transboundary collaboration can therefore occur without acknowledging which policy issues are interdependent, and in what way. This poses a risk of hampering its effectiveness to solve given policy issues, pertaining to a societal or environmental problem. On that account, this PhD thesis will investigate policy issue interdependencies in the transboundary collaborative governance of the Norrström water basin, situated in the Mideast of Sweden with its outlet in Stockholm. This is a novel approach to understand a key feature of environmental problems that makes them difficult to effectively address, and to further investigate the potential of collaborative governance as way to succeed in such endeavour. This licentiate thesis addresses this current research gap with the two following papers. Paper I introduces a methodological procedure for identifying and measuring interdependencies between policy issues based on their common, causal relationships. It thereby contributes to advancing the description of policy issues as an indicator of actors’ decision-making and governance effectiveness. Paper II places the policy issue interdependency networks developed in Paper I in relation to governance networks using a multilevel network approach. It analyzes the impact of policy issue interdependencies as exogenous drivers of collaborative governance, providing insights about the evolution of complex governance systems. With these papers, this thesis aims at a concretization and application of interdependent structures at the policy issue level and actor level respectively. It thereby meets an objective highlighted by previous research by integrating interdependent policy issues and collaborative governance, contributing to the study of complex governance systems through its formation, development and effectiveness.
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| 3. |
- Koivisto, Jenni, 1980-
(författare)
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Navigating in the Midst of Uncertainties : Challenges in Disaster Risk Governance in Mozambique
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Disasters cause heavy losses for societies and may quickly erode any development efforts. Consequently, disaster risk reduction (DRR) is an integral part of development work that should be addressed at multiple levels. Global DRR frameworks, scholars and practitioners all advocate disaster risk governance (DRG) strategies that are multi-stakeholder, polycentric and multisectoral. While various substantive knowledge gaps and questions arising from multiple risks and the crosscutting nature of DRR have been relatively well addressed, uncertainties relating to multiple DRR actors operating and collaborating at different scales have gained less attention in previous studies.This thesis investigates the uncertainties in DRG in Mozambique, a low-income country that regularly faces natural hazards. These hazards often cause heavy loss of life and livelihoods and economic damage. The four articles that together constitute this thesis focus on different sets of uncertainties and factors that have constrained or allowed Mozambique to take major steps in this policy area. By exploring strategic and institutional uncertainties related to stakeholder involvement, coordination and policy disputes, this thesis reveals different challenges and opportunities that affect DRR policymaking in Mozambique.This thesis concludes that Mozambique has managed to take important steps in DRR. However, as a consequence of the different challenges to DRR practice in Mozambique, policymaking can be short-sighted and makes slow progress, thus increasing the disconnect between theory, policies and practice. This thesis thus argues that DRG research and practice need to better take into account power-relations; coordination and capacity issues; and responsibilities and transparency across scales, both in Mozambique and elsewhere.
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