Working Papers

  • Nudging Towards Sustainability: Insights for Sustainable Consumption and Waste Management in Mombasa and Västernorrland

    Nudging Towards Sustainability: Insights for Sustainable Consumption and Waste Management in Mombasa and Västernorrland

    This study explores nudging as a transformative tool for promoting sustainable consumption and waste management in Mombasa, Kenya and Västernorrland, Sweden. By a literature review and global best practice analysis to benchmark successful nudging interventions worldwide, the research gathered insights on the nuances, challenges, and tailored nudges, to offer actionable and evidence-based strategies for local…

  • Let’s get together and make change: Towards a Child-Focused Cities Analytical Framework

    Let’s get together and make change: Towards a Child-Focused Cities Analytical Framework

    Children live in cities and local communities, implying that they have proximity to the local government rather than the national government. The interaction of children with their governments happens at the local level. And, children experience the realisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the local sphere of government. Yet, children are relegated to the…

  • Voluntary Local Review – Kibaha Town Council, Tanzania

    Voluntary Local Review – Kibaha Town Council, Tanzania

    This Voluntary Local Review (VLR) aims at understanding how well the SDGs have been localized and implemented in Kibaha Town Council (KTC), Tanzania. The process employed Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to represent local voices in a participatory and inclusive manner. The results show that localization of SDGs has helped the government and citizens to…

  • Voluntary Local Review – Emboreet village, Manyara, Tanzania

    Voluntary Local Review – Emboreet village, Manyara, Tanzania

    The United Nations Agenda 2030 contains 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets to address global social, environmental, and economic challenges by 2030, of which many must be implemented at the local level. Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR) have gained prominence as a means for local and regional governments to assess SDG progress and remaining…

  • Voluntary Local Review – City of Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    Voluntary Local Review – City of Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    This report looks into the localisation of SDGs in the City of Bijeljina, which is an SDG pioneer in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It reviews three SDGs – SDG5 (gender equality), SDG10 (inclusion), and SDG17 (partnerships towards goals) – through the lens of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) which is based on an immersion of researchers into…

  • Institutional Collaboration for Developing Local Democracy: A Literature Review

    This literature review presents findings from earlier research on institutional collaboration for developing local democracy. Local authorities engage in a range of different collaborative relationships with partners abroad to exchange knowledge and practices to the as-sumed benefit of all parties. Common examples of this are municipal partnerships, twinning projects and sister cities. This is an…

  • Multi-Level Perspectives on Anti-Corruption: A Systematic Literature Review

    Multi-Level Perspectives on Anti-Corruption: A Systematic Literature Review

    This systematic literature review investigates the extent to which recent anti-corruption literature goes beyond the established paradigms (i.e., principal-agent perspective, macro-level, structural, and legal centralistic approaches) to focus on society’s informal norms, everyday micro-level power relations and non-monetary currencies (e.g. respect, prestige, social status and trust). By reconceptualising the various meanings and morality of informal,non-legal…

  • Incorporating immigrant voices? Formal access to participatory mechanisms in the city of Barcelona

    Incorporating immigrant voices? Formal access to participatory mechanisms in the city of Barcelona

    Democratic innovations to enhance the participation of city-zens in urban settings have advanced in the world in the last decades. Avenues such as citizens’ assemblies, deliberative polls, participatory budgeting, e-petitions and online consultations have become part of the repertoire of participation available to urban residents. However, a pending question is whether local authorities envision specific…

  • Trans-Saharan labour emigration from Niger: Local governance as mediator of its underlying causes and consequences

    This report reviews the existing literature of trans-Saharan labour emigration from Niger both conducted by Nigeriens but also by other West Africans, given Niger’s importance as a country of transit. The literature on labour emigration from the Sahelian region, as in other parts of the world, is dominated by studies that emphasise particular causes (drought,…

  • Outmigration, Development, and Global Environmental Change. A Review and Discussion of Case Studies from the West African Sahel

    This working paper gives an overview over literature on emigration from the West Sahel, with a selective focus on resource-dependent livelihoods and how they are connected to outmigration from the Sahel, especially regarding Senegal and Niger. To complete the picture, we also cover some studies on urban population groups and regions beyond the Sahel, although…