University of Gothenburg
Reading list

Environmental Problems within Social Science: From Tragedy of the Commons to Planetary Boundaries

Samhällsvetenskapliga miljöproblem: från allmänningarnas tragedi till de planetära gränserna

Course
SK2223
Second cycle
15 credits (ECTS)
Go to Environmental Problems within Social Science: From Tragedy of the Commons to Planetary Boundaries

About the Reading list

Valid from
Spring semester 2025 (2025-01-20)
Decision date
2024-11-20

Books 

Joseph Heath (2021) The Philosopical Foundations of Climate Change Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Articles (in order of appearance, not alphabetical) 

  • Baumgärtner, S., Becker, C., Faber, M., & Manstetten, R. (2006). Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation. Ecological Economics, 59(4), 487-498.

  • Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162(3859): 1243-1248.

  • Jagers, S.C., Harring, N., Löfgren, Å., Sjöstedt, M., Alpizar F., Brülde, B., Langlet, D., Nilsson, A., Carney Almroth, B., Dupont, S., & Steffen, W. (2019) On the preconditions for large-scale collective action. Ambio, 1-15.

  • Mansbridge, J. (2014) The role of the state in governing the commons. Environmental Science & Policy 36 (2014) 8–10.

  • Jagers, S.C. (2007)Prospect for Green Liberalism. Durham, University Press of America, Chapter 1.

  • Pisano, U. (2012). Resilience and Sustainable Development: Theory of resilience thinking, systems thinking and adaptive governance. UESDN Quarterly Report N°26, Sept. 2012. https://www.cjwalsh.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ESDN_Resilience-and-Sustainable-Development_September-2012.pdf

  • Ungaro, S. (2005) Ecological Democracy. International Review of Sociology, 15:2, 293-303.

  • Dietz, Thomas and Eugene Rosa (1994) “Rethinking the Impacts of Population, Affluence, and Technology” Human Ecology Review 1: 277-300.

  • Ehrlich, Paul and Anne Ehrlich (2008) “Too many people, too much consumption”. Yale School of the Environment. Available at: https://e360.yale.edu/features/too_many_people_too_much_consumption

  • Ehrlich, Paul and John Holdren (1971) “Impact of Population Growth”, Science 171: 1212-1217.

  • Locher, F. (2020) "Neo-malthusian environmentalism, world fisheries crisis, and the global commons 1950s-1970s." The Historical Journal, 63(1), 187-207.

  • Fovahed, Masoud (2016) “Does capitalism have to be bad for the environment?”, Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/does-capitalism-have-to-be-bad-for-the-environment

  • Sandler, Blair (1994) "Grow or Die: Marxist theories of capitalism and the environment," Rethinking Marxism, 7: 38-57.

  • Storm, Servaas (2009) “Capitalism and climate change: can the invisible hand adjust the thermostat?” Development and Change 40: 1011-1038.

  • Hickel, Jason & Giorgos Kallis (2020) “Is Green Growth Possible?” New Political Economy 25: 469-486.

  • Fairbrother, Malcolm (2022) "What does Decoupling Mean? A Few Points of Clarification. Working paper.

  • Jagers, Sverker C. (2007). Compatibility between Sustainable Development and Liberal Democracy. Chapter 1 in Prospects for Green Liberal Democracy. Univ Pr of Amer, 2007. Chapter 1, pp. 11-36

  • von Stein, Jana. (2020) "Democracy, autocracy, and everything in between: How domestic institutions affect environmental protection." British Journal of Political Science: 1-19

  • Povitkina, M. 2018. Necessary but not Sustainable? The limits of democracy in achieving environmental sustainability. Introductory chapter, 28-31. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/56151

  • Mittiga, R. (2022). Political legitimacy, authoritarianism, and climate change. American Political Science Review, 116(3), 998-1011.

  • Finnegan, Jared J. "Institutions, climate change, and the foundations of long-term policymaking." Comparative Political Studies 55.7 (2022): 1198-1235.

  • Madden, Nathan J. "Green means stop: veto players and their impact on climate-change policy outputs." Environmental Politics4 (2014): 570-589.

  • Spoon, Jae‐Jae, Sara B. Hobolt, and Catherine E. De Vries. "Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment." European Journal of Political Research 2 (2014): 363-380.

  • Farstad, Fay M. "What explains variation in parties’ climate change salience?." Party Politics 24.6 (2018): 698-707.

  • Fernández-i-Marín, X., Knill, C., Steinbacher, C., & Steinebach, Y. (2023). Bureaucratic quality and the gap between implementation burden and administrative capacities. American Political Science Review, 1-21

  • Meckling, J., & Nahm, J. (2022). Strategic state capacity: how states counter opposition to climate policy. Comparative Political Studies, 55(3), 493-523.

  • Povitkina, Marina and Matti, Simon (2021). Quality of Government and Environmental Sustainability. In Bågenholm, Andreas, Bauhr, Monika, Grimes, Marcia and Rothstein, Bo (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 399-426.

  • Povitkina, Marina, and Ketevan Bolkvadze. "Fresh pipes with dirty water: How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies." European Journal of Political Research4 (2019): 1191-1212 (Read Abstract and pp. 1202-1208).

  • Dobson, A. (2007) Environmental Citizenship: Towards Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development, 15, 276–285.

  • Jagers, S.C., Linde, S., Martinsson, J. & Matti, S. (2017) Testing the importance of individuals’ motives for explaining environmentally significant behavior. Social Science Quarterly 98 (2) 644-658

  • Micheletti, M. & Stolle, D. (2012) Habits of Sustainable Citizenship: The Example of Political Consumerism. Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 12. Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. 141–163.

  • Fisher, Elizabeth. "EU Environmental Law and Legal Imagination In: The Evolution of EU Law. Edited by: Paul Craig and Gráinne de Búrca, Oxford University Press

  • Holling, C. S. (2012) “Response to ‘Panarchy and the Law’”. Ecology and Society 17(4): 37.

  • Ruhl, J. B. (2012) “Panarchy and the law”, Ecology and Society 17(3): 31.

  • Bernauer, Thomas. 2013. “Climate Change Politics”, Annual Review of Political Science, 16: 421-448.

  • Adams, W.M. (2014) ”The value of valuing nature”, Science 346: 549-551

  • McShane, K. (2007). "Anthropocentrism vs. Nonanthropocentrism: Why Should We Care?" Environmental Values, 16(2), 169–185.

  • Norton, B. (1997). "Convergence and Contextualism: Some Clarifications and a Reply to Steverson, Environmental Ethics, 19(1): 87-100.

  • Sandel, M. (1997) “It’s Immoral to Buy the Right to Pollute”. The New York Times, December 17

  • Pearce, D., Atkinson, G., & Mourato, S. (2006). Cost-benefit analysis and the environment: recent developments. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development. Chapter 1- 4.

  • Nyborg, K. (2014). Project evaluation with democratic decision-making: What does cost–benefit analysis really measure? Ecological Economics, 106, 124-131.

  • Caney, S. (2010). “Climate Change and the Duties of the Advantaged”, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy 13: 203-228.

  • Page, E. (2011) “Give it up for Climate Change: A Defense of the Beneficiary Pays Principle”. International Theory 4: 300-330

  • Barry, B. (1999) “Sustainability and Intergenerational Justice.” In: Dobson, A. (ed.) Fairness and Futurity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Beckerman, W. & C. Hepburn (2007) “The Ethics of the Discount Rate in the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change”. World Economics 8: 187-210.

  • Caney, S. (2014) “Climate Change, Intergenerational Equity, and the Social Discount Rate”. Politics, Philosophy & Economics 13: 320-342.

  • Hulme, M. (2010). "Problems with making and governing global kinds of knowledge." Global Environmental Change 20(4): 558-564

  • De la Cadena, M. (2010). "Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond "Politics". Cultural Anthropology 25(2): 334-370

  • Nightingale, A. J., S. Eriksen, et al. (2020). "Beyond Technical Fixes: climate solutions and the great derangement." Climate and Development 12(4): 343-352