Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
The ‘Nasty Politics’ of Swedish Climate Governance: A Threat to the Climate and Democracy
Version 1
: Received: 21 May 2024 / Approved: 21 May 2024 / Online: 22 May 2024 (07:42:03 CEST)
How to cite: von Malmborg, F. The ‘Nasty Politics’ of Swedish Climate Governance: A Threat to the Climate and Democracy. Preprints 2024, 2024051421. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202405.1421.v1 von Malmborg, F. The ‘Nasty Politics’ of Swedish Climate Governance: A Threat to the Climate and Democracy. Preprints 2024, 2024051421. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202405.1421.v1
Abstract
Sweden has long been hailed as a role model in climate policy. But the new right-wing government supported by a far-right populist party is undertaking a paradigm shift in Swedish climate policy and governance. This paper critically analyses this paradigm shift and its impacts on legitimacy, accountability and justice. These are democratic norms important in the analysis of a just transition to climate neutrality. Severe democratic deficits of the policy process and the policies proposed and adopted are identified, suggesting ‘nasty politics’ characterised by populist, divisive, and contentious rhetoric that entrenches polarization and us/them narratives. Climate scientists and the climate justice movement are discriminated in the policy process, the latter also being accused of terrorism and seen as a threat to democracy by the government. The deficits are partly explained by the neo-corporatist political system of Sweden and the dominance of the (neo)liberal discourse of ecological modernization in Swedish environmental policy, but primarily with the ongoing process of autocratization driven by anti-democratic far-right populist parties throughout Europe. The anti-democratic climate policy reforms in Sweden are foreboding an unwelcome development in the EU given the boost of far-right populist parties in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament in June 2024.
Keywords
Accountability; autocratization; climate governance; climate policy; democracy; justice; legitimacy; policy entrepreneurs; policy process.
Subject
Social Sciences, Political Science
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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