Swedish and international politics have been quite turbulent over the past year, especially regarding the contestation of knowledge, an issue that seems more relevant than ever – and which has highlighted value conflicts. Anke Fischer, the research leader in this focus area, discusses the challenging themes her team worked on in 2024.
One of the main themes we worked on was the public debate on transition governance and climate policies – an extremely fast-evolving communication arena, both domestically and internationally. We examined how value-based arguments related to justice and freedom influenced the negotiation and contestation of climate policies in Sweden. We were fascinated by the dynamics of the public debate. Just a few years ago, justice emerged as a key principle for the climate transition and was institutionalised, for instance, in the EU’s Just Transition Mechanism. In Sweden, references to justice quite rapidly became an important ingredient in the climate political debate, often used to argue that current climate policies placed an unfair burden on certain groups in society. In our analysis of the ongoing public debate, we then found that references to justice were increasingly replaced by arguments related to freedom. A typical statement was, for example, that climate policies should not affect an individual citizen’s freedom to live and work wherever they wanted.
Freedom, like justice, is of course a powerful value-based argument. Everyone wants freedom and justice, and few societal actors would want to suggest that they are planning to constrain people’s freedom or make society less just. Given the fundamental appeal of these concepts, we believe it is important to carefully examine the meaning of these principles as they are constituted in public debate.
We found that many speakers used the current situation as a reference point, and portrayed climate policies as an intervention that compromised current freedom. The discussion about mobility was particularly heated. Driving a car, unconstrained by fuel prices, was often equated to freedom. Although some voices questioned whether the current state really meant freedom, or whether there were other ways to think about freedom, this discussion never gained traction in the public debate. In our analysis, we thus saw that value-based arguments played an important role in climate political discourses, but that their meaning was rather ‘thin’ – their main function seemed to be to legitimise the speaker’s argument through their normative power. Based on these findings, we piloted a workshop format suitable for educational and local governance contexts that encourages participants to explore in more depth what freedom means to them – a strand of work that we continue to develop in 2025.
You presented this work in a panel discussion Mistra’s recent seminar on sustainability and democracy in Brussels. How do you think this type of research can contribute to society in a time that, as Mistra’s seminar put it, is characterised by climate change and geopolitical instability?
I think it is absolutely essential that society reclaims the key values of modern society –freedom and justice – as guiding principles that help citizens and decision-makers to genuinely evaluate different policy options, rather than to use them a strategic rhetorical tools to either stop change or legitimise decisions that have already been taken. This, of course, requires an in-depth and inclusive political debate on what we all, as citizens, want society to look like. Such a debate does not presume consensus, but a constructive engagement with disagreement – a point that is central to Mistra Environmental Communication’s approach and that the programme has been working with in different contexts and with different methods since its start. Our work in this focus area has highlighted the important role of values, and how we interpret and use them, in shaping opportunities for change. Our next steps are to examine the role of emotions, as well as of knowledge and expertise in such processes.
Are you curious to learn more about this focus area? Read more here.
"Spotlight on: Focus area Knowledge"
Swedish and international politics have been quite turbulent over the past year, especially regarding the contestation of knowledge, an issue that seems more relevant than ever – and which has highlighted value conflicts. Anke Fischer, the research leader in this focus area, discusses the challenging themes her team worked on in 2024.
One of the main themes we worked on was the public debate on transition governance and climate policies – an extremely fast-evolving communication arena, both domestically and internationally. We examined how value-based arguments related to justice and freedom influenced the negotiation and contestation of climate policies in Sweden. We were fascinated by the dynamics of the public debate. Just a few years ago, justice emerged as a key principle for the climate transition and was institutionalised, for instance, in the EU’s Just Transition Mechanism. In Sweden, references to justice quite rapidly became an important ingredient in the climate political debate, often used to argue that current climate policies placed an unfair burden on certain groups in society. In our analysis of the ongoing public debate, we then found that references to justice were increasingly replaced by arguments related to freedom. A typical statement was, for example, that climate policies should not affect an individual citizen’s freedom to live and work wherever they wanted.
Freedom, like justice, is of course a powerful value-based argument. Everyone wants freedom and justice, and few societal actors would want to suggest that they are planning to constrain people’s freedom or make society less just. Given the fundamental appeal of these concepts, we believe it is important to carefully examine the meaning of these principles as they are constituted in public debate.
We found that many speakers used the current situation as a reference point, and portrayed climate policies as an intervention that compromised current freedom. The discussion about mobility was particularly heated. Driving a car, unconstrained by fuel prices, was often equated to freedom. Although some voices questioned whether the current state really meant freedom, or whether there were other ways to think about freedom, this discussion never gained traction in the public debate. In our analysis, we thus saw that value-based arguments played an important role in climate political discourses, but that their meaning was rather ‘thin’ – their main function seemed to be to legitimise the speaker’s argument through their normative power. Based on these findings, we piloted a workshop format suitable for educational and local governance contexts that encourages participants to explore in more depth what freedom means to them – a strand of work that we continue to develop in 2025.
You presented this work in a panel discussion Mistra’s recent seminar on sustainability and democracy in Brussels. How do you think this type of research can contribute to society in a time that, as Mistra’s seminar put it, is characterised by climate change and geopolitical instability?
I think it is absolutely essential that society reclaims the key values of modern society –freedom and justice – as guiding principles that help citizens and decision-makers to genuinely evaluate different policy options, rather than to use them a strategic rhetorical tools to either stop change or legitimise decisions that have already been taken. This, of course, requires an in-depth and inclusive political debate on what we all, as citizens, want society to look like. Such a debate does not presume consensus, but a constructive engagement with disagreement – a point that is central to Mistra Environmental Communication’s approach and that the programme has been working with in different contexts and with different methods since its start. Our work in this focus area has highlighted the important role of values, and how we interpret and use them, in shaping opportunities for change. Our next steps are to examine the role of emotions, as well as of knowledge and expertise in such processes.
Are you curious to learn more about this focus area? Read more here.