Skip to content
NUPI skole

Researcher

Kacper Szulecki

Research professor
kacper_szulecki_11.jpg

Contactinfo and files

kacper.szulecki@nupi.no
Original image

Summary

Kacper Szulecki is a Research Professor in International Climate Governance at NUPI, and a Professor II at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo, where he is a fellow in the Include Centre for socially inclusive energy transitions

He studied international relations, political sociology, psychology and linguistics in Warsaw, Oslo, Amsterdam, and in Konstanz. 

His main research interests are the politics of decarbonization, climate and environmental politics, energy security, EU climate and energy governance, dissent as well as intra-European migration. 

He has edited several volumes, including “Energy Security in Europe” (Palgrave 2018) and the "Handbook on European Union Climate Change Policy and Politics" (Edward Elgar 2023), and published five monographs. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers, among others in Nature Energy, Governance, Climate Policy, Journal of European Public Policy, Energy Research and Social Science, and Environmental Politics (Best Article 2018). He has also written over 100 pieces for various newspapers and magazines, and has been interviewed by e.g. CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Duetsche Welle, Die Zeit and the Green European Journal. 

Expertise

  • Security policy
  • Foreign policy
  • Migration
  • Climate
  • Energy
  • Human rights
  • Governance
  • The EU

Education

2012 Dr. rer. soc. in political sociology, University of Konstanz

2008 M.Sc. in International Relations (specialization: Global Environmental Governance), VU Amsterdam

Work Experience

2019 Researcher (professor competence in 2020), Dept of Political Science, UiO

2019 Guest researcher, Department of History and Civilization, EUI Florence

2017 Visiting Fellow, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUI Florence

2014-2018 Assistant professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Oslo

2013 Guest researcher, Dept. of Climate Policy, DIW Berlin 2013-2014 Dahrendorf Fellow, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin

2008-2012 Researcher, Cluster of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Integration", University of Konstanz

2008 Intern, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU Amsterdam

Aktivitet

Publications
Publications
Report

The Political Economy of Global Climate Action: Where Does the West Go Next After COP28?

This report offers a critical, candid examination of the landscape of global climate action. Current efforts are lacking even amid consecutive UN climate conferences that build upon the successes of the 2015 Paris Agreement. It argues that the incremental progress achieved thus far is insufficient to address the escalating climate crisis. Challenges of domestic political economy and lacking global governance are substantively at fault. We identify several related barriers to effective climate action, including mismatched time horizons, shared public and private responsibility, the complexity of global challenges, and problems of global collective action and burden distribution. The report explores the distributional costs of climate policies, emphasizing the impacts of populism on climate action (and vice versa), and the need for a fair transition. Global governance challenges are attributable to the limits of existing multilateral institutions and the persistently difficult geopolitical and macroeconomic outlook. We conclude by offering a set of specific policy recommendations, spanning corporate taxation, public investment, long-term commitment mechanisms, the climate action-energy security interface, corporate responsibility, and the imperative of a just, equitable, and participatory transition. The proposed strategies can contribute to achieving time-consistent, decisive and systemic action that tackles the urgent climate crisis, building on political incentives and disincentives. This systematic lens – focused on political economy and global governance constraints - needs to be applied to all climate action policies to get ahead of the curve in the global and domestic political environment in which we find ourselves.

  • Foreign policy
  • Climate
  • Energy
  • Governance
  • International organizations
Screenshot 2024-02-20 at 11.41.12.png
  • Foreign policy
  • Climate
  • Energy
  • Governance
  • International organizations
Media
Media
Media

Climate and Russia - Does the world need nuclear power?

The rising global temperature must be restricted to well below a two-degree increase. It’s crucial to make electricity production carbon neutral as quickly as possible. Is nuclear power the new game changer for achieving this ambitious goal? In this documentary from DW, NUPI Research Professor Kacper Szulecki is interviewed about nuclear energy.

  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Energy
Screenshot 2024-02-13 at 09.57.24.png
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Energy
Publications
Publications

The EU's CBAM and Its ‘Significant Others’: Three Perspectives on the Political Fallout from Europe's Unilateral Climate Policy Initiative

As part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission has launched a tool to protect the fulfilment of Europe's climate policy targets – the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). It is thought that the CBAM will spark stiff resistance from Europe's external trade partners, potentially undermining the initiative. How this plays out will depend in part on who the opponents and potential allies are – and how the European Union (EU) engages with them. But which non-EU countries have a stake in the CBAM? The criteria for selecting third countries that are relevant for the CBAM are often implicit, which can lead to contradictory policy analyses and confused climate diplomacy. This research note compares three different perspectives that result in different lists of non-EU countries that are important for the success of the CBAM. Awareness of these three perspectives amongst EU actors can help the CBAM succeed.

jcms.webp
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Emigrant external voting in Central-Eastern Europe after EU enlargement

The European Union's Eastern Enlargement of 2004–2007 triggered a large wave of migration. While the influence of Central-Eastern European (CEE) migrants on Western European politics has been studied, the impact of outward migration and political remittances “sent” by expatriates remain unexplored, despite the salience of democratic backsliding and populist politics in the region. We ask how external voting among migrants differs from electoral results in homelands over time, drawing on an original dataset gathering voting results among migrants from six CEE countries in fifteen Western European host countries. Using models estimated with Bayesian ordinary least squares regression, we test three hypotheses: two related to the disparity of diaspora votes from homeland party systems over time; and one to the ideological leanings of diasporas. We observe a growing discrepancy and note that diaspora votes follow the ideological fluctuations in the country of origin but distort it, with CEE migrants voting for more liberal and more economically right-wing parties than voters ‘at home’.

  • Europe
  • Migration
  • The EU
X02613794.jpg
  • Europe
  • Migration
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Chapter

Norway’s Climate Policy: Don’t Think of the Elephant!

All Norwegian governments in the twenty-first century, left and right, have made climate action an important element of their diplomacy and domestic policy, while recently some political parties have even made climate neutrality and decarbonisation the core of their electoral campaign messages. Norway has played the role of an advocate for international climate action, for instance of rainforest protection. Moreover, government incentives such as tax levies have been instrumental in the spectacular expansion of electric vehicles. However, despite the self-promoted image of a climate policy champion abroad, Norway’s efforts to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions have been modest since signing the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997. Norway is exporting oil and gas that cause massive emissions, but the significance of the fossil fuel sector for the country makes it difficult to find alternatives and seriously consider rapid phase out. That said, a debate on the future of the oil and gas sector is ongoing. Whilst Norway’s point of departure in an imminent transition is rather favourable, the lack of progress is due to insufficient political leadership and vision. Norwegian decision makers need to be bold in their choice of whether the transition’s main goal should be managing decline in the oil and gas sector or managing climate-related economic risks. Meanwhile, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the EU’s decision for a drastic reduction in dependence on Russian fossil fuels, the lifetime of Norway’s oil and gas production could well be extended by a decade or more. It is not unreasonable to expect that the last molecule of fossil methane burned in Europe before it switches to hydrogen and biogas—is going to come from Norway.

  • Climate
  • Governance
TFE.PNG
  • Climate
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Book

Handbook on European Union Climate Change Policy and Politics

Through detailed and wide-ranging analysis, the Handbook on European Union Climate Change Policy and Politics provides a critical assessment of current and emerging challenges facing the EU in committing to and delivering increasingly ambitious climate policy objectives. Highlighting the importance of topics such as finance and investment, litigation, ‘hard to abate’ sectors and negative emissions, it offers an up-to-date exploration of the complexities of climate politics and policy making.

  • Europe
  • Climate
  • Governance
  • The EU
content.jpg
  • Europe
  • Climate
  • Governance
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Semi-peripheries in the world-system? The Visegrad group countries in the geopolitical order of energy and raw materials after the war in Ukraine

What are the geopolitical risk implications related to the war in Ukraine for the raw material and energy policies of countries highly dependent on Russia? This paper looks at the Visegrad Group (V4) states – Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – as some of the most impacted countries and assesses their position in the emerging new geopolitical and energy order. V4 countries display a semi-peripheral position in the world-system, as defined by Immanuel Wallerstein. On the geopolitical level, they were balancing between dependence on Russia in energy and raw materials (a result of Cold War legacies) and economic integration with Western countries. However, after the Cold War, dependence on raw materials from the East went hand in hand with dependence on technology and investment from the West, as the V4 region saw the emergence of ‘dependent capitalism.’ The war in Ukraine may reshuffle these dependencies by changing the meaning of the ‘centre,’ for which such actors as the United States, Western Europe or China will strive after Russia's importance has weakened in the V4 countries. It may also create an opportunity to redefine the V4's semi-peripheral status. Drawing on an analysis of recent documents and governmental strategies that emerged in the aftermath of Russia's invasion in 2022, we offer a structured comparative analysis of the way V4 states responded to the crisis along four dimensions (positioning in the international political economy of energy and technology, role of the state, visions of energy futures, geopolitical and geoeconomic course). In the conclusions, we outline the main changes in the import of raw materials, fuels and technologies in individual V4 countries and consider the possible position of the region in the future energy geopolitical order.

  • Europe
  • Energy
RP.PNG
  • Europe
  • Energy
Publications
Publications
Book

External Voting: The Patterns and Drivers of Central European Migrants' Homeland Electoral Participation

This open access book is the first monograph that brings together insights from comparative politics, political sociology, and migration studies to introduce the current state of knowledge on external voting and transnational politics. Drawing on new data gathered within the DIASPOlitic project, which created a comparative dataset of external voting results for 6 countries of origin and 17 countries of residence as well as an extensive qualitative dataset of 80 in-depth interviews with four groups of migrants, this book not only illustrates theoretical problems with empirical material, but also provides answers to previously unaddressed questions. The empirical material focuses on the European context. The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (2004-2007) triggered a westward wave of migration from Central and Eastern European countries which faced the expansion of existing émigré communities and the emergence of new ones. As this process coincided with the expansion of migrant voting rights, the result is a large set of populous diaspora communities which can potentially have a significant impact on country electoral politics, making the study of external voting highly relevant. This book’s introduction takes stock of current research on transnational politics and external voting, presenting core puzzles. The following chapter introduces the context of intra-European migration and the political situation in Central-Eastern European sending countries. The next two sections address the empirical puzzles, drawing on new quantitative and qualitative. The conclusion takes stock of the evidence gathered, discusses the normative problem of non-resident voters enfranchisement, connects external voting to the broader debate on political remittances and finally, maps the terrain ahead for future research.

  • Migration
  • Governance
  • The EU
External Voting the patterns and drivers of Central european migrants homeland electoral participation.webp
  • Migration
  • Governance
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Energy justice and energy democracy: Separated twins, rival concepts or just buzzwords?

Many new concepts have emerged to better capture socio-technical change in energy systems from a normative perspective. Two of the most visible, popularized, and politically charged are Energy Justice and Energy Democracy, but it is the tension between them that has drawn recent controversy. Instead of arguing for the superiority of one over the other, this paper's aim is to demonstrate their differential contribution and areas of productive overlap using both quantitative and qualitative measures. It presents the results of the systematic review of 495 articles on Energy Democracy and Energy Justice in the Web of Science database, with attention to the geographical focus, scale, technology, and social groups dominant in both literatures. We find that both the concepts and literatures employing them are very closely related, almost like twins. The key difference is the failure of the Energy Democracy literature to engage with questions of energy poverty and distributional (in)justice. For Energy Justice, we find that despite lip service paid to, for example, the Global South, normative research in energy transitions sphere remains highly Western-centric. We highlight, too, that both terms are most often used as buzzwords and that this undermines knowledge building and the radical potential for change which is inherent in the two concepts and their applications.

  • Energy
Screenshot 2024-01-30 at 10.45.43.png
  • Energy
Publications
Publications
Report

External Voting among Central European Migrants Living in Western Europe

Non-resident citizens’ participation in national elections is known as external voting. This report presents the first comparative dataset of external voting, both in parliamentary and presidential elections. We gathered voting results among migrants from nine Central and Eastern European countries, with the main analysis focusing on six where most data were available: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Romania. The analysed countries of residence where diasporas cast their votes were Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden (EU members) as well as two countries belonging to the European Economic Area (Norway and Iceland) and Switzerland. How different are external voting results from those seen in countries of origin? What are the ideological differences between voting migrants and the ‘mean’ voter back home, and to what extent does that matter? These are some of the questions the data gathered may help shed light on.

  • Europe
  • Migration
Screenshot 2024-01-30 at 10.25.24.png
  • Europe
  • Migration
1 - 10 of 36 items