Political Science

Main Research Areas

• Collective action and the commons
• Institutions
• Water management, governance and policy

Current Research

Jesper Svensson is, since March 2023, the Mistra Biopath Post-doc at Lund University. Some of the questions Jesper tries to answer in his current research:

• The importance of property rights for natur conservation and prosperity?
• What policy features are acceptable among Swedish forest owners, and what the price of biodiversity conservation actions would be?
• Under which conditions can we use market-based strategies to tackle environmental problems without being abused by markets?

Jesper has 10 years of experience working with water and development challenges in a range of countries, including China, Canada, India, Mongolia and the US. Before relocating to Lund, Jesper obtained his PhD from Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment in 2022.

His thesis "Two Hand's, Multiple Fingerprints" expands on Elinor Ostrom's (2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics) work on institutional diversity by showing how the state and market (two hands) shape the design of water rights trading in different parts of China (multiple fingerprints). In doing so, he theorized the condition under which water markets are configured in China in terms of property rights, governance arrangements, and infrastructure over space and time.  Drawing from semi-structured interviews, historical archives, and qualitative and quantitative measures on water rights trading, he relied on a combination of case-study and comparative analysis.

Ongoing research projects: Mistra Biopath

Ongoing research environments: Environmental Politics Research Group