The Swedish climate policy framework as a means for climate policy integration: an assessment

Has the Swedish Climate Policy Framework – including the new Swedish Climate Act – adopted in June 2017, been conducive to advancing climate mitigation, and if so, to what extent and in which aspects? Although Sweden is often described as a frontrunner in climate work, several evaluations prior to the adoption of the Climate Policy Framework and the Climate Act concluded that Swedish climate policy has suffered from both implementation and monitoring deficits, as well as from the fact that climate goals and strategies were non-legally binding. Taken together, such deficits make the stable, long-term prioritizing of climate mitigation over other sector policies increasingly difficult, thus limiting the possibilities to reach future targets. This article focuses on three dimensions of climate policy integration – assessing policy processes, outputs and outcomes – with the aim to analyse political developments and policy outcomes in Sweden after the implementation of the Climate Policy Framework and the Climate Act. The results of a comprehensive set of interviews with policy experts and high-level decision-makers show that the framework is believed to have had important effects, mainly in terms of changing both policy language, cross-sector coordination, and increasing the prioritization of the climate issue. Thus the study (1) contributes to a better theoretical and empirical understanding of Climate Change Acts as instruments for climate policy integration; (2) paves the way for future comparative studies; and (3) presents important practical lessons for policy makers on the effects of legal mechanisms to achieve climate mitigation.Key policy insights Climate Acts provide a legal framework for governmental climate activities.A comprehensive framework including three dimensions of climate policy integration – assessing process, output and outcome, should be used to evaluate Climate Act effects.The Swedish Climate Policy Framework and Climate Act has induced a weak type of climate policy integration, showing effects on climate policy debate, coordination, policy measure implementation and policy support.The framework sends strong signals of political will to address climate change, but the non-inclusion of targets and instruments in the Swedish Climate Act is causing debate and insecurity regarding what policy instruments will be implemented