Browsing by Author "Jagers, Sverker C."

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Attitudes to Personal Carbon Allowances: The effect of trust in politicians, perceived fairness and ideology
(2009-05-04T09:59:05Z) Jagers, Sverker C.; Löfgren, Åsa; Stripple, Johannes
The idea of Personal Carbon Allowances (PCAs) was presented by the British Environment Secretary David Miliband in 2006. Although no state is seriously developing proposals for them, they have been heavily debated within academia, NGOs and policy making circles. PCAs can be seen as a logical extension of market efficiency underpinning emissions trading schemes, so far only applied at the firm level, to individuals. The purpose of this paper is to analyse some critical aspects of the public’s support for a PCA scheme. We focus on the relations between attitude towards a PCA scheme and trust in politicians, perceived fairness and ideology, respectively. We also analyse the relation between the respective attitudes towards an increase in the current tax rate and towards an implementation of a PCA scheme. We base our study on a mail questionnaire sent out to a random, representative sample in Sweden.
Common ground for effort sharing? Preferred principles for distributing climate mitigation efforts
(2011-03) Hjerpe, Mattias; Löfgren, Åsa; Linnér, Björn-Ola; Hennlock, Magnus; Sterner, Thomas; Jagers, Sverker C.
This paper fills a gap in the current academic and policy literature concerning how parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change find common ground when distributing commitments and responsibilities to curb climate change. Preferred principles for sharing the effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are compared among 170 delegates and more than 300 observers attending the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Respondents were asked to indicate their degree of support for eight effort-sharing principles for mitigation action. The survey results are analysed according to geographical region and party coalition affiliation. The results indicate that voluntary contribution, indicated as willingness to contribute, was the least preferred principle among both negotiators and observers. This could be seen as ironic, given that voluntary contribution is the guiding principle of the Copenhagen Accord. Across regions and party coalitions, agreement was strongest for basing a country’s mitigation level on its capacity to pay in terms of GDP per capita and on its historic greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.
Democracy and Economic Development
(2013-02) Povitkina, Maryna; Jagers, Sverker C.; Sjöstedt, Martin; Sundström, Aksel; QoG Institute
Is democracy favorable or adverse for the environment? While some studies find democracy to increase the likelihood of achieving sustainable development, others propose that democracy rather has negative effects on the environment. This paper contributes explicitly to this debate, but also adds insights from research arguing that the effects of democracy are conditioned by surrounding institutions. More specifically, building on this literature, we argue that the way democracy works – whether it is an instrument for collective action beneficial to the environment or an instrument for patronage and clientelism – depends on levels of economic development. The overall objective of the article is to test this proposition empirically. Using the Marine Trophic Index as a proxy for overfishing, we investigate the impact of democracy on the health of the marine environment in a global sample from 1972 to 2006. The analysis provides interesting insights regarding the condi-tional role of economic development. We report negative effects of democracy in settings of low gross national income, while this pattern is reversed when economic development has reached a certain threshold. Finally, we discuss how democracy affects the prospects for sustainable development and based on our conclusions offer suggestions for future studies in this field of research.
Drought and Trust
(2023-04) Ahlerup, Pelle; Sundström, Aksel; Jagers, Sverker C.; Sjöstedt, Martin; The Quality of Government Institute
Droughts can affect people’s political trust positively, through rallying effects, or negatively, through blame attribution. We examine how drought conditions affect political trust in the context of Africa. We link high-precision exogenous climate data to survey respondents, 2002–2018, and report moderate negative effects of drought conditions on people’s trust in their president. These negative effects increase with the severity of drought conditions. The political economy of favoritism, where some regions are preferentially treated by rulers, should result in heterogeneous effects across territories. We find that trust increases in capital regions and in leader birth regions during dry conditions. In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. This is in line with the idea that capital regions and leader birth regions could be preferentially treated in the aftermath of droughts. Understanding these processes further is important given their salience because of global warming.
Environmental commitments in different types of democracies: The role of liberal, social-liberal, and deliberative politics
(2021-03) Povitkina, Marina; Jagers, Sverker C.; V-Dem Institute
Ever since the recognition of ongoing, human-induced, large-scale environmental degradation, from the early 1960s onwards, the scholarly community has looked at democracy with mixed feelings. Some assert, quite openly, that democracy is devastating for the environmental performance of countries, some claim the opposite, while yet other scholars suggest that democratic models other than liberal democracy may offer a route forwards, towards a sustainable society. Both political theorists and empirical social scientists add fuel to this debate, and neither side has of yet settled the argument. For obvious reasons, political theorists typically lack empirical evidence for most of their assertions as to whether democracy per se, or different variants of democracy, are more or less pro-environmental. In parallel, empirically oriented scholarship has been impaired with poor data, often obstructing them from properly evaluating democracy’s actual environmental pros and cons. In this paper we make use of recently collected unique data, enabling us to better address both these literatures. Using the data gathered by the Varieties of Democracy project on different conceptions of democracy, we empirically test whether different features of democracy, such as liberal in its thinner understanding, social- liberal, and deliberative, are beneficial for countries’ commitment to environmental improvements. In particular, we investigate which of these distinct features make democracies more prone to deliver environmental policy outputs, i.e., adopt climate laws, develop stricter environmental policies and incorporate sustainability into economic policies.
Exploring the Impact of Political Regimes on Biodiversity
(2020-03) Zizka, Alexander; Rydén, Oskar; Edler, Daniel; Klein, Johannes; Aronsson, Heléne; Perrigo, Allison; Silvestro, Daniele; Jagers, Sverker C.; Lindberg, Staffan I.; Antonelli, Alexandre; V-Dem Institute
National governments are the main actors responsible for mapping and protecting their biodiversity, but countries differ in their capacity, willingness, and effectiveness to do so. We quantify the global biodiversity managed by different regime types and developed a tool to explore the links between level of democracy and other key socio-economic variables with the number of natural history specimens registered within country boundaries. Using this tool, distinct and previously unknown patterns emerge around the world, that urge for increased collaboration between the natural and social sciences to further explore these patterns and their underlying processes.
Governance through community policing: What makes citizens report poaching of wildlife to state officials?
(2021-03) Sjöstedt, Martin; Sundström, Aksel; Jagers, Sverker C.; Ntuli, Herbert; The Quality of Government institute
Rulers of weak states face a predicament. They lack capacity to monitor crime and need citizens to partake in intelligence-sharing. Yet, agents of such authorities are seldom trusted, raising doubts about whether locals will provide information. The case of wildlife poaching in African countries illustrates this tension, where rangers are few and offenders on good terms with locals. Why do some locals choose to assist rangers and report on poachers, while others refrain from doing so? We surveyed 2300 residents in and near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. We find that people that are afraid of rangers and perceive them as corruptible are less willing to assist in information-sharing. Seeing poaching as condemnable also matters. In contrast, individuals’ stakes in conservation and perceptions of wildlife as threatened do not predict our outcome. For effective community policing, policy needs to change how officials are seen.
How Policy Legitimacy Affects Policy Support Throughout the Policy Cycle
(2016-12) Jagers, Sverker C.; Matti, Simon; Nordblom, Katarina; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
We analyze the importance of legitimacy and compare how drivers of public policy attitudes evolve across the policy process consisting of the input (i.e. the processes forgoing acquisition of power and the procedures permeating political decision-making), throughput (i.e. the inclusion of and interactions between actors in a governance-system) and output (i.e. the substantive consequences of those decisions) stages. Using unique panel data through the three phases of the congestion tax in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, we find that legitimacy is indeed important in explaining policy support. Moreover, we find a lingering effect where support in one phase depends on legitimacy both in the present and in previous phases. Hence, our study takes us one step further on the road to understand the complicated dynamic mechanisms behind the interactions between policy making, policy support and the legitimacy and approval of politicians and political processes.
Institutional Quality Causes Social Trust: Evidence from Survey and Experimental Data on Trusting Under the Shadow of Doubt
(2020-12) Martinangeli, Andrea F.M.; Povitkina, Marina; Jagers, Sverker C.; Rothstein, Bo; The QoG institute
Social trust is a crucial ingredient for successful collective action. What causes social trust to develop, however, remains poorly understood. The quality of political institutions has been proposed as a candidate driver and has been shown to correlate with social trust. We show that this relationship is causal. We begin by documenting a positive correlation between quality of institutions, measured by embezzlement, and social trust using survey data. We then take the investigation to the laboratory: We rst exogenously expose subjects to di erent levels of institutional quality in an environment mimicking public administration embezzlement. We then measure social trust among the participants using a trust game. Coherent with our survey evidence, individuals exposed to low institutional quality trust signi cantly less
Intergenerational Responsibility: Historical Emissions and Climate Change Adaptation
(2007-10) Jagers, Sverker C.; Duus-Otterström, Göran; QoG Institute
It is widely held that climate change requires that we engage in strategies of adaptation as well as mitigation, but the normative questions surrounding justice in adaptation remains insufficiently investigated. This paper asks, from a presumption that climate change adaptation presents burdens which needs to be fairly distributed between states, what a fair way of allocating remedial responsibility for adaptation would look like. A number of principles are analyzed, some of which attach normative weight to causal contribution to the problem and others not. The conclusion is that none of the suggestions prevalent in the literature is without profound problems, but a promising path for the future is to construct pluralistic models of justice which are sensitive to both a state’s level of pollution and its ability to pay. The paper ends, however, by predicting that while adaptation from a normative standpoint is an other-regarding duty, actual future adaptations regimes are likely to be market-based. Particularly likely is an insurance-based regime, according to which each state is expected to fend for its own protection.
Justice, liberty and bread - for all? On the compatibility between sustainable development and liberal democracy
(2002) Jagers, Sverker C.
Mass support for conserving 30% of the Earth by 2030: Experimental evidence from five continents
(2024-12) Michaelsen, Patrik; Sundström, Aksel; Jagers, Sverker C.; The Quality of Governmen Institute
Rapid global expansion of protected areas is critical for safeguarding biodiversity but depends on political action for successful implementation. Following ratification of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, most countries face an unprecedented increase in area-based conservation in adhering to its Target 3: conserving 30% of land, waters, and seas by 2030. These expansions prompt difficult trade-offs between conservation, social and economic interests. A key factor in securing legitimacy and practical feasibility for expansion programs is understanding what factors determine public support for them. Using novel survey and conjoint experiment data we show that, in eight countries across five continents, public opinion is 1) strongly in favor of the “30-by-30”-target, and 2) surprisingly consistent about policy priorities for the design of both international and domestic expansion regimes. We find that, at the international level, support increases with protection responsibilities equally split between countries, rich countries bearing higher costs, more countries cooperating, and placement trade banned. At the domestic level, support generally increase when nature-values are prioritized over social or economic values, and in many countries decrease when costs are borne by a general tax increase, parks are managed by private companies, and when access to parks is restricted. Together, our results demonstrate how protected area expansion policies can be shaped in line with public opinion and facilitate achieving 30% protected areas by 2030.
Navigating Towards Effective Fishery Management: Exploring the Impact of Imbalanced Burdens on Regime Legitimacy
(2008-04) Berlin, Daniel; Möller, Ulrika; Jagers, Sverker C.; QoG Institute
Despite two decades of the Common Fishery Policy (CFP), the fishery politics of the European Union (EU) is considered a failure when it comes to securing fish-stocks. This paper explores reasons to this state of affairs by analysing the views and opinions among those subjected to regulations, namely professional fishermen (in Sweden). Since the capacity of any natural management regime to protect the resources depends on appropriators’ compliance, the prospects of sustainable natural management depends on improved understanding of when and why appropriators consent, and ultimately comply, with a regulative policy. So, when do fishermen comply with a fishery management regime? Instrumental views give a straightforward explanation; when the risk of being caught is considered high (and the potential economic profit of rule-breaking is low). More normative views point at various “qualities of government” such as procedural fairness, distributive justice, trust and legitimacy, but is much less specified in terms of actual explanations to appropriators’ actions. This paper adds a piece to the compliance puzzle by, relying on the model presented by Levi(1997), exploring the importance of 1) imbalanced burdens and 2) trust in authorities. Results confirm the importance of trust in authorities but contradict the idea that experiences of imbalance in burdens have a negative effect on legitimacy. Strikingly enough, fishermen who believe that other governments take greater concern in their fishing-fleets than the Swedish government, value the principles of Swedish fishery politics more.
Navigating Towards Effective Fishery Management? Exploring the Dynamics of Compliance
(2007-12) Berlin, Daniel; Jagers, Sverker C.; Möller, Ulrika; QoG Institute
This paper deals with compliance in the European and Swedish fisheries management regimes. It takes on a theoretical exploration of the dynamics of institutional compliance, and extracts six hypotheses based on theoretical approaches focusing on the links between compliance and individual level trust, compliance and instituional trust, and compliance and norms. More specifically, the hypotheses suggest (1) that fishermen experiencing that governmental authorities perceive them as cheaters will be more prone to accept rule violations that others; (2) that the inclination of individual fishermen to accept regulations depend on their perceptions of the behaviour of other fishermen; (3) that fishermen feeling that they and their Swedish fellows are put under stricter regulations and supervision than fishermen in other countries are more tolerant against violations; (4) that those experiencing that fishermen’s knowledge is valued among other parties are more positive to the prevailing regulations than others; (5) that fishermen with experiences from stakeholder participation in the fisheries regime are more negative to rule violations; and (6) that there is a moral distinction implying that rule-violations are accepted as long as they are considered as an expression of need rather than greed. The empirical test of these hypotheses are beyond the scope of this paper. Having presented the six hypotheses, a descriptive section on European and Swedish fishery closes the paper.
Paradise Islands? Island States and the Provision of Environmental Goods
(2013-11) Jagers, Sverker C.; Povitkina, Marina; Sjöstedt, Martin; Sundström, Aksel; QoG Institute
Island states have been shown to trump continental states on collective action-related outcomes, such as democracy and institutional quality. The argument tested in this article contends that the same logic might apply to environmental goods. However, our empirical analysis shows counter-intuitive results. Firstly, among the 107 cross-national environmental indicators we analyze, being an island only has a positive impact on 20 measurements. Secondly, the causal factors suggested to make islands outperform continen-tal states in other aspects have weak explanatory power when analyzing the variance of the states' envi-ronmental performances. We conclude by discussing how these findings can be further explored.
Public Resources and Accountability: Experimental Evidence
(2024-12) Alvarado, Mariana; Ahmed, Taiwo A.; Sundström, Aksel; Jagers, Sverker C.; The Quality of Governmen Institute
Recent political economy research indicates that the well-known positive relationship between taxation and accountability may be driven not by the source of revenues per se but by citizens’ expectations regarding how they will be used. Two mechanisms have been proposed: information and ownership. We leverage both observational and experimental data to further test these mechanisms and their interaction in a realworld policy setting. In particular, we field a comprehensive survey experiment in carefully selected Peruvian districts that benefit from mining fees. The experiment manipulates the source of revenues (local taxes vs mining fees), as well as ownership over these revenues, while keeping the size of the budget constant. We find that it is easier to manipulate ownership over taxes than windfalls, and that low levels of tax awareness hinder ownership over tax revenues. Nonetheless, our findings indicate that increasing ownership over tax revenues does motivate people to monitor the use of the budget but has no effect on immediate behaviors. Contrary to expectations, we also find that respondents are more likely to demand particularistic goods when the budget is perceived to come from taxes than when it comes from windfalls. Finally, the information and ownership mechanisms are found to act as complements.
Tax Evasion and the Importance of Trust
(2005) Nordblom, Katarina; Jagers, Sverker C.; Hammar, Henrik; Department of Economics
Unless people pay the taxes they are obliged to pay, a general welfare state will eventually collapse. Thus, for the welfare state to survive in the long run, tax compliance is of utmost importance. Using Swedish individual survey data we analyze which factors affect the perception of tax evasion. The analysis is conducted on ten different taxes and the results differ widely. Hence, we show that it is important to study different taxes separately rather than treating tax evasion as one common phenomenon. In this paper we focus on the importance of different kinds of trust. Whether or not people in general are regarded as trustworthy only has a minor impact on perceived tax evasion. Instead, what matters is trust or distrust in politi- cians. People who distrust the parliament are more likely than others to think that tax evasion is common, and the result holds for most of the taxes studied. This may have severe long-run consequences for the welfare state. If people stop trusting their leading politicians, social norms about tax compliance deteriorate and the possibilities of collecting taxes for maintaining the welfare state are reduced.
The Impact of Corruption on Climate Change Mitigation
(2024-05) Sundström, Aksel; Harring, Niklas; Jagers, Sverker C.; Povitkina, Marina; The Quality of Government Institute (QoG)
This is a review of the rapidly growing literature on how corruption affects climate change mitigation, focusing both on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks. Analyzing 200 studies, we document that corruption hampers mitigation, i.e. increases emissions, and worsens sinks’ storage capacity through deforestation or overfishing. Reducing corruption is vital to successfully combatting global warming, because corruption makes climate policies less ambitious when formulated and less effective when implemented, due to low rule compliance. The findings are established through various types of data, research designs and methods. Trends are mapped and points of disagreement are highlighted. We suggest that research move beyond using country-level indicators and propose several avenues for future research.
What explains attitudes towards tax levels? A multi-tax comparison
(2006) Nordblom, Katarina; Jagers, Sverker C.; Hammar, Henrik; Department of Economics
We analyse Swedes’ opinions about the level of taxation for eleven different taxes to see what taxes people are most reluctant to and why. The most unpopular tax is the real estate tax, while the corporate tax is the least unpopular. We find a strong self interest effect in attitudes, and for corrective taxes information increases acceptance. We perform two case studies of Swedish tax policy and find political economy reasons for the recent abolition of the gift and inheritance taxes, and weak support for the ongoing green tax shift from labour to environmental taxes.
Who is willing to stay sick for the collective? – Individual characteristics, experience, and trust
(2019-05) Carlsson, Fredrik; Jacobsson, Gunnar; Jagers, Sverker C.; Lampi, Elina; Robertsson, Felicia; Rönnerstrand, Björn; Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg
This paper deals with the collective action dilemma of antibiotic resistance. Despite the collective threat posed by antibiotic resistance, there are limited incentives for individuals to consider the contribution of their decisions to use antibiotics to the spread of resistance. Drawing on a novel survey of Swedish citizens (n=1,906), we study factors linked to i) willingness to accept a physician’s decision not to prescribe antibiotics and ii) willingness to limit personal use of antibiotics voluntary. In our study, 53 percent of the respondents stated that they would be willing to accept the physician’s decision despite disagreeing with it, and trust in the healthcare sector is significantly associated with acceptance. When it comes to people’s willingness to voluntarily abstain from using antibiotics, a majority stated that they are willing or very willing not to take antibiotics. The variation in willingness is best explained by concerns about antibiotic resistance and experience of antibiotic therapy, especially if a respondent has been denied antibiotics. Generalized trust seems to be unrelated to willingness to abstain, but the perception that other people limit their personal use of antibiotics is linked to respondents’ own willingness to do so. Few of the individual characteristics can explain the variation in that decision.