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Doublespeak? Sustainability in the Arctic—A Text Mining Analysis of Norwegian Parliamentary Speeches

Author

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  • Mikko Moilanen

    (School of Business and Economics, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9037 Tromsø, Norway)

  • Stein Østbye

    (School of Business and Economics, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9037 Tromsø, Norway)

Abstract

This paper contributes to the recent literature on sustainability in the Arctic as a political concept. Parliamentary proceedings have increasingly been recognized as an important source of information for eliciting political issues. In this paper, we use unsupervised text mining techniques to analyze parliamentary speeches for Norway from the period from 2009 to 2016 to answer whether political coalitions talk differently about sustainability in the Arctic depending on being in opposition or government. We find that the difference between being in government and opposition, controlling for political label (left-right), is far more important than the difference between left and right, controlling for role (opposition-government). The results suggest that in the trade-off between political preferences and election success, the balance is tilted in favour of the latter. Our interpretation is that opportunistic behavior seems to dominate partisan behavior in the politics related to sustainability in the Arctic.

Suggested Citation

  • Mikko Moilanen & Stein Østbye, 2021. "Doublespeak? Sustainability in the Arctic—A Text Mining Analysis of Norwegian Parliamentary Speeches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-15, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9397-:d:619035
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Konstantinos G. Papaspyropoulos & Harikleia Liakou & Panayotis Dimopoulos, 2023. "Climate Change in the Biodiversity and Forest Strategies in Greece Using Discourse Analysis and Text Mining: Is an Integration into a Cost-Efficient Natural Resources Policy Feasible?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-12, April.

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