| Summary: | 65 pages. Presented to the Department of Environmental Studies and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts March 2018 The public land-use policy history of Sweden and the U.S. from the mid-19th century to the present day contains distinguishing patterns in each country’s approach to land access and ownership. My analysis centers on the legal frameworks surrounding access to land, focusing on the Swedish concept of allemansrätten, or freedom to roam, in Sweden and on the ties between public land and democracy in U.S. rhetoric, politics and collective thought. Land use policy in both nations simultaneously place an emphasis on the right of access to and proliferation of public lands while denying land rights for the Indigenous Sámi people of the Arctic and the American Indians in North America. While land access policy is touted in both Sweden and the U.S. as forwarding the respective nations’ goals and images of equality and freedom, many aspects of both nations’ land access policy do not meet international standards for recognition of the land rights of Indigenous peoples, revealing an intentional paradox representative of crucial gaps between image and reality for two nations generally considered to be primary examples of democracy on the global stage.
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