Aksel Sundström
Biographic Data
| ID | 321677 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aksel Sundström |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aksel |
| FAMILY NAME | Sundström |
| SIGNATURE | SUNDSTRÖM A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2951-9303 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 505 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Public support for military conservation: Understanding public opinion to the ‘war on poachers’ in three countries
The efforts made by states to curb wildlife poaching increasingly involve the deployment of military forces, especially in countries of the Global South. This shift towards a “war on poachers” can include measures such as shoot-on-sight policies, raising concerns about civil and human rights. While previous research has emphasized the perspectives of local communities, law enforcement, or hunters, to the best of our knowledge little is known abou…
The impact of corruption on climate change mitigation: A review article
Age Inequalities in Political Representation: A Review Article
People in political decision-making across the globe tend to be much older than the average voter. As such, parliaments and cabinets are unrepresentative of the larger population. This has consequences: it risks favouring policies geared towards the interests of older cohorts, it might alienate youth from voting and could push parties to appeal (even more) to older voters. In this review, we synthesize the growing literature on youth representati…
The Ethnic Politics of Nature Protection in Africa
Environmental disasters and ecomodernist beliefs: Insights from a quasi‐natural experiment
This article contributes to knowledge of how environmental disasters affect ecomodernist beliefs, i.e. the view that technology can solve environmental problems. Such beliefs in the general public are key to build mass support for environmental policies relying on large‐scale scientific solutions, but their stability is poorly understood. We argue that ecomodernist beliefs are more malleable than assumed and can be altered through events that hig…
V-Dem Codebook v14
Do young legislators face age-based discrimination in parliament? Views from young MPs across the globe
There is a growing literature on youth representation in parliament illustrating a stark underrepresentation of adults aged 35 years or under, as well as 40 years or under, in most national legislatures across the globe. However, we know less about the kind of treatment young MPs receive once elected to parliament. Through a survey with structured and open-ended questions, featuring 144 young legislators across the globe, we illustrate that – jud…
Climate shocks, regional favoritism and trust in leaders: Insights from droughts in Africa
We examine how droughts affect trust in leaders, linking climate data to African survey respondents, 2002–2018. • We report negative effects of droughts on people’s trust in their president and the effects increase with drought severity. • In line with theories of regional favoritism, droughts increase trust in leaders in leader birth regions and in capitals. • In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regi…
Responding to Reviewers: Guidelines and Advice
Responding to those who have read and critiqued your work, such as editors and reviewers, is a central part of academic exchange. To be able to explain and defend the choices you have made in a response letter is also a key skill that takes time to develop. It is my hope that this essay will help you reflect on the process of writing these responses and provide some useful tips toward getting published
Youth without Representation: The Absence of Young Adults in Parliaments, Cabinets, and Candidacies
Officeholders in contemporary parliaments and cabinets are more likely than not to be male, wealthy, middle-aged or older, and from the dominant ethnicity, whereas young adults have an insufficient presence in political office. Young adults—those aged 35 years or under—comprise a mere ten percent of all parliamentarians globally, and three percent of all cabinet members. Compared to their presence in the world’s population, this age group faces a…
Governance through community policing: What makes citizens report poaching of wildlife to state officials
Conservation rules – e.g. protected area regulations that aim to reduce wildlife poaching – often have an inherent challenge: while relying on that locals should share intelligence about observed crime to authorities, such rules tend to be weakly supported by these communities. Enforcement officials of conservation authorities (such as rangers) are seldom trusted, and this in turn raises doubts about whether locals will provide sufficient informa…
Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (Warp) data set
The absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence …
Young adults' under-representation in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives has one of the oldest pools of politicians in the world today: the average member of the House is 58 years at the time of their election, which is about 20 years older than the average American. But why are younger adults scarce among these representatives? Here we trace the relative absence of youth in both the primary and general elections of 2020 using a supply and demand framework. Our study finds that (1) th…
Measuring Support for Women’s Political Leadership
Public opinion surveys are a fundamental tool to measure support for women’s political rights. This article focuses on perceptions of women’s suitability for leadership. To what extent do influential cross-country surveys that include such items suffer from measurement errors stemming from gender of interviewer effects? Building on the literature on social desirability, we expect that respondents are more likely to express preference for men’s su…
V-Dem Codebook v11
V-Dem Dataset v11.1
Rule by the elderly: The absence of youth in cabinets of France, Germany and the UK
The gender gap in voter turnout: An artefact of men’s over-reporting in survey research
Is there a gender gap in voting? Most cross-national survey research on gender inequalities in voter turnout finds that men have a higher probability to vote than women. Yet, some studies using validated turnout data shed some doubt on this finding. We revisit the question of a gender gap in voting using official records. In more detail, we compare the gender gap in turnout between survey data and official electoral figures across 73 elections. O…
Trust, corruption, and compliance with regulations: Attitudes to rule violations in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park
Objective While trust is proposed as a key concept to understand people's compliance in natural resource governance, research would benefit from being more precise. Our aim is to test whether more specific survey measures of people's tendency to violate rules and the degree to which law enforcing rangers are seen as corrupt trumps more commonly used items on intra‐personal trust and trust in institutions. Methods We analyze an original survey of …
Political Party Characteristics and Women’s Representation: The Case of the European Parliament
Why do some political parties have a higher share of elected women? Analysing all parties in the European Parliament (EP) from 1979–2019, we test the effect of five party characteristics (their ideology, age, size, female leadership, and intra-party gender quotas) on their share of female Members (MEPs). We find a higher share of female MEPs in green, liberal and leftist parties and in parties with a female leader. Party gender quotas increase th…
Boys’ Club or Good Ol’ Boys Club? Corruption and the Parliamentary Representation of Young and Old Men and Women
Research on political representation has shown that corruption is not gender-neutral: it benefits the recruitment of men to political office more than it does women. Yet, it is unclear if all men or a specific type of men, elderly men, benefits the most from corrupt networks in terms of political presence. The ‘old boys’ network thesis’ would single out older men as the most likely beneficiaries of the homosocial capital gained through informal t…
Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Explaining Youths’ Relative Absence in Legislatures
This article conceptualizes the relative absence of youth in legislatures, a feature we perceive as a democratic deficit with detrimental consequences. It introduces a new operationalization: the Youth Representation Index. Rather than calculating youths’ representation by the percentage of Members of Parliament 35 or 40 years old and younger or legislatures’ median age, we argue that scholars should assess youths’ parliamentary presence relative…
Understanding the drivers of subsistence poaching in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area: What matters for community wildlife conservation
Ntuli, H., A. Sundström, M. Sjöstedt, E. Muchapondwa, S. C. Jagers, and A. Linell. 2021 Understanding the drivers of subsistence poaching in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area: What matters for community wildlife conservation? Ecology and Society 26(1):18. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12201-260118
V-Dem Codebook V10
Quotas, the Electoral System Type and the Election of Young Women
This article focuses on a specific group of legislators facing large hurdles during recruitment processes, namely young women. Building on the institutional literature, we hypothesize that gender quota regulations, youth quotas, and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems should particularly benefit young women. Our quantitative study, capturing one hundred elections conducted between 2012 and 2017, finds partial support for our expect…
Age representation in parliaments: Can institutions pave the way for the young
Middle-aged to senior men of the ethnic majority and higher income groups are generally overrepresented in parliaments. While research on group representation has examined issues of gender, economic standing, and, more recently, ethnicity, few studies examine age groups. We argue that the design of political institutions influences the share of young adults in parliaments across nations and hypothesize that the electoral system type, age candidac…
Women’s Political Empowerment: A New Global Index, 1900–2012
Corruption as an obstacle to women’s political representation: Evidence from local councils in 18 European countries
This article presents evidence from 18 European countries showing that where levels of corruption are high, the proportion of women elected is low. We hypothesize that corruption indicates the presence of ‘shadowy arrangements’ that benefit the already privileged and pose a direct obstacle to women when male-dominated networks influence political parties’ candidate selection. There is also an indirect signal effect derived from citizen’s experien…
Regional variation in voter turnout in Europe: The impact of corruption perceptions
What determines women’s political representation at the local level? A fine-grained analysis of the European regions
Mainly investigating the share of women in national parliaments, the vast cross-national literature on women’s descriptive (numerical) representation frequently overlooks women’s local representation. Yet, local councils are important political arenas. To what extent are women underrepresented there? What are the determinants of the variation of women’s local representation within and across countries? We investigate these questions through a sub…
Do young female candidates face double barriers or an outgroup advantage? The case of the European Parliament
While intersectionality is a recurrent theme in the literature on women's political representation, few studies empirically disentangle who are the women who get elected to parliaments. An argument on biases in recruitment practices suggests that those who are members of more than one outgroup, such as young women, benefit from an ‘outgroup advantage’. In elections, a candidate with two outgroup features might attract more voter support than a ca…
Young deputies in the European Parliament: A starkly underrepresented age group
Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Explaining Youths’ Relative Absence in Legislatures
This article conceptualizes the relative absence of youth in legislatures, a feature we perceive as a democratic deficit with detrimental consequences. It introduces a new operationalization: the Youth Representation Index. Rather than calculating youths’ representation by the percentage of Members of Parliament 35 or 40 years old and younger or legislatures’ median age, we argue that scholars should assess youths’ parliamentary presence relative…
Women's rights in democratic transitions: A global sequence analysis, 1900–2012
What determines countries’ successful transition to democracy? This article explores the impact of granting civil rights in authoritarian regimes and especially the gendered aspect of this process. It argues that both men's and women's liberal rights are essential conditions for democratisation to take place: providing both women and men rights reduces an inequality that affects half of the population, thus increasing the costs of repression and …
Young adults' under-representation in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives has one of the oldest pools of politicians in the world today: the average member of the House is 58 years at the time of their election, which is about 20 years older than the average American. But why are younger adults scarce among these representatives? Here we trace the relative absence of youth in both the primary and general elections of 2020 using a supply and demand framework. Our study finds that (1) th…
Corruption and women in cabinets: Informal barriers to recruitment in the executive
Research on corruption and women in politics has mainly focused on legislatures, generally finding that corruption decreases the election of women. This article turns the spotlight to the executive branch—an arena where selection is less transparent than recruitment to legislative seats—and examines if corruption decrease the share of ministers who are women. Drawing on feminist institutionalist theories, we posit that in an environment of high p…
Political Party Characteristics and Women’s Representation: The Case of the European Parliament
Why do some political parties have a higher share of elected women? Analysing all parties in the European Parliament (EP) from 1979–2019, we test the effect of five party characteristics (their ideology, age, size, female leadership, and intra-party gender quotas) on their share of female Members (MEPs). We find a higher share of female MEPs in green, liberal and leftist parties and in parties with a female leader. Party gender quotas increase th…
Modernization Theory: How to Measure and Operationalize it When Gauging Variation in Women’s Representation
Covenants with broken swords: Corruption and law enforcement in governance of the commons
Women in cabinets: The role of party ideology and government turnover
There is still relatively little research on what factors explain the share of women in cabinets across countries and time. Focusing on party ideology, we advance this budding research. First, we examine if heads of government from left-leaning and/or liberal parties tend to select a larger proportion female cabinet members than those from conservative parties. Second, we evaluate whether a switch toward a left-leaning or liberal government benef…
Violence and the Costs of Honesty: Rethinking Bureaucrats' Choices to Take Bribes
Explanations of bureaucrats' decisions to take bribes include accounts of incentives as well as expectations. However, there are further considerations in violent contexts, where refusal of bribes may have dire consequences. Yet, insight into this topic is limited. This article investigates how violence upholds bribery, through interviews with South African officials who enforce regulations in communities where gangs operate. The investigation sh…
Examining Gender Differences in Environmental Concern in the Swedish General Public, 1990-2011
While numerous cross-sectional studies find modest gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, this pattern has not been examined over time—primarily due to a lack of suitable data. Using twenty-two years of nationally representative survey data from the Swedish general public, we test whether the theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern—where…
Rule by the elderly: The absence of youth in cabinets of France, Germany and the UK
Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (Warp) data set
The absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence …
The gender gap in voter turnout: An artefact of men’s over-reporting in survey research
Is there a gender gap in voting? Most cross-national survey research on gender inequalities in voter turnout finds that men have a higher probability to vote than women. Yet, some studies using validated turnout data shed some doubt on this finding. We revisit the question of a gender gap in voting using official records. In more detail, we compare the gender gap in turnout between survey data and official electoral figures across 73 elections. O…
Corruption and Violations of Conservation Rules: A Survey Experiment with Resource Users
Organizing the Audit Society: Does Good Auditing Generate Less Public Sector Corruption
Few cross-country studies examine the effects of auditing quality on public sector corruption. We present a definition of good auditing consisting of three principles: independence, professionalism, and recognizing the people as the principal. Using novel data from an original expert survey covering more than 100 countries, the concept is then operationalized and tested empirically. The results demonstrate that good auditing has a positive effect…
Gender differences in environmental concern among Swedish citizens and politicians
Numerous studies find modest, consistent gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, but results from the few studies of gender differences among politicians are inconsistent. We test if women report stronger environmental concern than men across four levels of the Swedish polity, utilising three data sets: a representative sample of the general public, a survey of all represent…
Responding to Reviewers: Guidelines and Advice
Responding to those who have read and critiqued your work, such as editors and reviewers, is a central part of academic exchange. To be able to explain and defend the choices you have made in a response letter is also a key skill that takes time to develop. It is my hope that this essay will help you reflect on the process of writing these responses and provide some useful tips toward getting published
Measuring Support for Women’s Political Leadership
Public opinion surveys are a fundamental tool to measure support for women’s political rights. This article focuses on perceptions of women’s suitability for leadership. To what extent do influential cross-country surveys that include such items suffer from measurement errors stemming from gender of interviewer effects? Building on the literature on social desirability, we expect that respondents are more likely to express preference for men’s su…
Corruption in the commons: Why bribery hampers enforcement of environmental regulations in South African fisheries
Few studies have explored on the micro-level why corruption hampers environmental regulations. The relationship between corruption and regulatory compliance is here investigated through confidential in-depth interviews with South African small-scale fishermen. Respondents describe how the expected behavior of inspectors and other resource users to ask for or accept bribes are vital in their compliance decisions. The interviews also shed some ligh…
Corruption and citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in Europe: What is the empirical linkage
Corruption in the commons: Why bribery hampers enforcement of environmental regulations in South African fisheries
Few studies have explored on the micro-level why corruption hampers environmental regulations. The relationship between corruption and regulatory compliance is here investigated through confidential in-depth interviews with South African small-scale fishermen. Respondents describe how the expected behavior of inspectors and other resource users to ask for or accept bribes are vital in their compliance decisions. The interviews also shed some ligh…
Overfishing in Southern Africa: A Comparative Account of Regime Effectiveness and National Capacities
The international community has in recent decades supported the installment of formal regulations and institutions for monitoring, control, and surveillance to decrease illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in African nations. Yet, few studies have investigated the effectiveness of these reforms. By conducting a systematic comparison of the enforcement of fisheries regulations in five Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries…
Examining Gender Differences in Environmental Concern in the Swedish General Public, 1990-2011
While numerous cross-sectional studies find modest gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, this pattern has not been examined over time—primarily due to a lack of suitable data. Using twenty-two years of nationally representative survey data from the Swedish general public, we test whether the theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern—where…
Modernization Theory: How to Measure and Operationalize it When Gauging Variation in Women’s Representation
Gender differences in environmental concern among Swedish citizens and politicians
Numerous studies find modest, consistent gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, but results from the few studies of gender differences among politicians are inconsistent. We test if women report stronger environmental concern than men across four levels of the Swedish polity, utilising three data sets: a representative sample of the general public, a survey of all represent…
Women and nuclear energy: Examining the gender divide in opposition to nuclear power among swedish citizens and politicians
Covenants with broken swords: Corruption and law enforcement in governance of the commons
What determines women’s political representation at the local level? A fine-grained analysis of the European regions
Mainly investigating the share of women in national parliaments, the vast cross-national literature on women’s descriptive (numerical) representation frequently overlooks women’s local representation. Yet, local councils are important political arenas. To what extent are women underrepresented there? What are the determinants of the variation of women’s local representation within and across countries? We investigate these questions through a sub…
Regional variation in voter turnout in Europe: The impact of corruption perceptions
Corruption and Violations of Conservation Rules: A Survey Experiment with Resource Users
Violence and the Costs of Honesty: Rethinking Bureaucrats' Choices to Take Bribes
Explanations of bureaucrats' decisions to take bribes include accounts of incentives as well as expectations. However, there are further considerations in violent contexts, where refusal of bribes may have dire consequences. Yet, insight into this topic is limited. This article investigates how violence upholds bribery, through interviews with South African officials who enforce regulations in communities where gangs operate. The investigation sh…
Corruption as an obstacle to women’s political representation: Evidence from local councils in 18 European countries
This article presents evidence from 18 European countries showing that where levels of corruption are high, the proportion of women elected is low. We hypothesize that corruption indicates the presence of ‘shadowy arrangements’ that benefit the already privileged and pose a direct obstacle to women when male-dominated networks influence political parties’ candidate selection. There is also an indirect signal effect derived from citizen’s experien…
Women’s Political Empowerment: A New Global Index, 1900–2012
Women's rights in democratic transitions: A global sequence analysis, 1900–2012
What determines countries’ successful transition to democracy? This article explores the impact of granting civil rights in authoritarian regimes and especially the gendered aspect of this process. It argues that both men's and women's liberal rights are essential conditions for democratisation to take place: providing both women and men rights reduces an inequality that affects half of the population, thus increasing the costs of repression and …
Governing transboundary commons in Africa: The emergence and challenges of the Kavango–Zambezi Treaty
The advent of ‘Peace Parks’ on the African continent is puzzling from the perspective of institutional theory. We focus on the world’s largest transfrontier conservation cooperation that exists to date, the Kavango–Zambezi Treaty, which was ratified by Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in 2011. The collaboration seeks to foster sustainable governance of resources in the region. The paper asks two questions: What were the main factor…
Organizing the Audit Society: Does Good Auditing Generate Less Public Sector Corruption
Few cross-country studies examine the effects of auditing quality on public sector corruption. We present a definition of good auditing consisting of three principles: independence, professionalism, and recognizing the people as the principal. Using novel data from an original expert survey covering more than 100 countries, the concept is then operationalized and tested empirically. The results demonstrate that good auditing has a positive effect…
Women in cabinets: The role of party ideology and government turnover
There is still relatively little research on what factors explain the share of women in cabinets across countries and time. Focusing on party ideology, we advance this budding research. First, we examine if heads of government from left-leaning and/or liberal parties tend to select a larger proportion female cabinet members than those from conservative parties. Second, we evaluate whether a switch toward a left-leaning or liberal government benef…
Age representation in parliaments: Can institutions pave the way for the young
Middle-aged to senior men of the ethnic majority and higher income groups are generally overrepresented in parliaments. While research on group representation has examined issues of gender, economic standing, and, more recently, ethnicity, few studies examine age groups. We argue that the design of political institutions influences the share of young adults in parliaments across nations and hypothesize that the electoral system type, age candidac…
V-Dem Codebook V9
Exploring Performance-Related Pay as an Anticorruption Tool
The last decades’ reform of public administrations has in numerous countries included the use of performance-related pay (PRP). Such programs have been said to reduce civil servants’ incentives for bribe taking and have therefore been promoted as an anticorruption tool. However, the article proposes that such schemes’ suppressing effect on corruption incentives is questionable in highly corrupt settings because the absence of non-corrupt senior m…
Why Do People Pay Bribes? A Survey Experiment with Resource Users
Objective Although corruption is known to hinder natural resource regulations, the research area remains underexplored. Departing from a debate on the reasons driving people's engagement in corruption, this research note studies why some resource users bribe enforcement officers. Methods In a between‐subjects survey experiment, with a sample of resource users active in South African small‐scale fisheries, we examine the effects of inspectors’ res…
Young deputies in the European Parliament: A starkly underrepresented age group
Women's Representation across Different Generations: A Longitudinal Analysis of the European Parliament
In this article, we focus on generational differences in women's representation and hypothesize that younger generations of women should be more highly represented than older generations, both in general and within the same parliament. We tested this hypothesis with data on all members who have ever served in the European Parliament since 1979. Of the four generations who have ever served in Brussels and Strasbourg – the World War II generation, …
Political science (41 works) · Law (33 works) · Politics (30 works) · Law (25 works) · Economics (24 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (15 works) · Language change (15 works)