Stockholm Series #7: Voting in Times of Climate Change: What Extreme Weather Events mean for Electoral Management

The lecture marks the seventh event in the Stockholm Series of Public Lectures on Climate Change and Democracy.

This initiative is a cooperation between renowned Stockholm-based institutions with a particular focus on climate change and democracy from different perspectives. It aims to inform, inspire, and engage experts and the general public alike by providing high-profile public lectures on the climate-democracy nexus, followed by debate.

Voting in Times of Climate Change: What Extreme Weather Events mean for Electoral Management with Sarah Birch, Professor of Political Science, King’s College London.

Climate change presents great challenges to democratic governance–not least when it comes to delivering elections. Extreme weather events like wildfires, storms and floods impact elections in numerous deleterious ways, including by interfering with voter registration, campaigning and voting, reductions in turnout, and increases in electoral violence. For electoral management bodies (EMBs), the main challenge of extreme weather is maintaining electoral resilience and minimising disruption. At the same time, the increased frequency of such events can also help EMBs stress test elections and can trigger institutional overhauls that have benefits in other domains. This lecture looks at how we can maximize the opportunities arising from the growing challenges to elections, for instance to increase public trust in democratic institutions.

The lecture will be opened by Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary-General, International IDEA, and followed by a conversation with Tom Rogers, Former Electoral Commissioner of Australia, moderated by Erik Asplund, Senior Advisor in Elections and Crisis, International IDEA.

The event will conclude with a networking reception at 17:30.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at climate@idea.int.