The Imagined Environmental Citizen Exploring the State - Individual Relationship in Swedish Environmental Policy
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: : As environmental problems today are understood as being problems of collective action, they also depend on the broad engagement of individual citizens for their successful solution. Institutions directed towards resolving the environmental situation need, accordingly, to be perceived by the citizenry as promoting acceptable goals, for acceptable reasons and by the use of acceptable means. In short, institutions aiming at instigating and sustaining collective action need first to be perceived by the collective itself as being legitimate. Emanating from the notion of public acceptance as essential for long-term effective policies, this thesis takes a first step towards an evaluation of the degree of legitimacy for Swedish environmental policy. In this endeavour, its primary purpose is to elucidate and study the foundations for policy legitimacy, that is, the normative principles embedded in political sustainability aspirations and expressed through the official Swedish environmental policy discourse. The main aim of this thesis is, accordingly; To explore, map and analyse the values, beliefs and principles underpinning Swedish environmental policy aiming at involving household members in the work towards an environmental sustainable society, as reflected through official policy documents and policy instruments in-use on both national and municipal levels of government.
Author: Simon Matti
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2124362586