ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on developments over the last decade and analyzes how the Swedish environmental movement has influenced, actively participated in and resisted government policy. A key theme in Swedish environmental movement research is the significance of processes of institutionalization of the movement at an early stage, which also provides an explanation for the Swedish government's early commitment to environmentalism. The chapter demonstrates how the institutionalization of movement actors, in terms of regularized access to policymakers, had been shaped up to this point by certain forms of cooperation that were an essential part of the consensus culture of the post-war Swedish model. It also introduces advanced liberal responsibilization in terms of an active involvement by civil society and business in political responsibilities previously associated with state agencies. The chapter describes the Swedish environmental movement by focusing on few moments of intensified globalization of activism. It concludes what these few moments reveal about the processes of (anti-)institutionalization and (de-)politicization.