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A New Hope: The Role and Influence of Civil Society in the Return of the Environmental State

A trend has recently sprung up among several European countries, that have adopted climate laws as a way to deal with the current climate crisis. Comparing these laws, it seems as though there are vast differences between the levels of commitment to take climate action. Especially, one case seems to stand out significantly as it is much more ambitious in many regards: The Danish Climate Act of 2019. What makes this case even more unique is that Danish civil society was heavily involved in the creation of this policy outcome. Thus, with this thesis, I hoped to explore the role of non-state actors in normative shifts in the ways countries and civil society think about and react to CC. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to answer the following puzzle: What is the role and influence of the Danish climate movement – posing as norm entrepreneurs – in the adoption of Denmark’s Climate Act?  Using qualitative semi-structured expert interviews, three major explanatory variables were discovered that are likely to have resulted in the adoption of Denmark’s climate law. The first variable concentrates on the strong social cohesion and close relations among various actor-groups in Denmark, while the second contends that various developments intertwined and overlapped in a manner that constituted the perfect timing for the climate movement to act. Together, the interplay between these two major variables facilitated the third major finding of this research project, which argues that the effective character of the social mobilization around the cause, triggered by the strategic agency of the Danish climate movement, has led to the adoption of Denmark’s Climate Act.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-43949
Date January 2021
CreatorsAndraschko, Lukas
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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