Who pulls the strings? - Key stakeholders in Swedish forest policy development

Sammanfattning: Forest policy is subject to much debate due to its significance for both biodiversity, climate change mitigation and economy. This study uses the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and a Linear Probability Model regression analysis to estimate the impact of different stakeholder groups on finished forest legislation. I make use of data from a referral round of a recent official Swedish forest investigation (SOU 2020:73), consisting of 158 stakeholder inputs on 63 policy change proposals. I find that positive input from stakeholders is positively correlated with the chances of the policy change to be included in the final policy legislation. Also, input from stakeholders more interested in wood and biomass production correlates more strongly with the final policy than input from the groups more interested in the environmental and cultural values of the forest. The findings highlight potential differences in stakeholder impact on forest policy, and a method to empirically investigate this further.