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Analysing decentralised natural resource governance: proposition for a “politicised” institutional analysis and development framework

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Abstract

There has often been a gap between policy intentions and outcomes in the field of natural resource governance. Analysing the factors for these discrepancies requires multi-level approaches that relate policy decisions formulated at the national and international level with the decisions of local resource users. A key asset of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework is precisely its ability to link multiple governance levels. Yet most commons literature has been limited to the study of collective action among local communities without considering higher institutional and government levels. To overcome this limitation, I posit for a methodological development of the framework, which bridges the gap between institutional analysis, power-centred and historical approaches, and discourse analysis. The application of the extended framework to the study of state afforestation policies in Vietnam highlights the need to simultaneously consider institutions, the politico-economic context and discourses across governance and government levels. As illustrated in this paper, such a framework does not only facilitate the analysis of policy shortcomings but also supports the design and dissemination of policy recommendations.

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Notes

  1. Local community is understood in this paper as a local unit of actors using or making decisions over natural resources. It is not necessary a homogeneous group with similar interests and objectives.

  2. A search was made on the terms “international”, “national” or “regional” in the abstracts. The selected papers were then reviewed individually to check whether they spanned over several governance levels.

  3. It was the focus of a special issue of the International Journal of the Commons, 2008, vol. 2, No. 1.

  4. A recent development of political ecology has also focused on the politics behind the production of environmental knowledge (Forsyth 2003).

  5. For more references on this topic, see Ostrom (2005), p. 9.

  6. The nature of resources (e.g. common-pool resources) is inherent to the resources and should not be confused with the type of property regime (e.g. common-property regime) that defines the access and use of the resources.

  7. Readers will note that the institutional levels of the IAD framework do not necessarily correspond to administrative levels. For instance, local communities can operate at the collective-choice or at the constitutional levels when crafting their own rules or deciding on rule-crafting modalities.

  8. Values are understood in this paper as the personal or societal standards of a person or society that define what it valuable in life.

  9. For example, in their analysis of the decentralisation of resource management in six countries, Ribot et al. (2006) refer to “local institutions” as “local authorities”.

  10. For instance, in several Asian countries, settlement programmes targeting ethnic minority groups in mountainous areas have been justified by accounts of forest loss.

  11. This figure is contestable according to Mellac (2000) who asserts that there is no valid reference to estimate forest cover in Vietnam before the 1960s.

  12. The term “forest land” has been generally used in English. I prefer, however, “forestry land” which literally corresponds to the Vietnamese term “đất lâm nghiệp”. The term “forest land” may be confusing as it suggests that the designated land has an existing forest cover.

  13. SFEs range from small exploitations managing forest plantations to large exploitation and production units including wood processing companies.

  14. The 5MHRP features as one of the most costly national programmes for the government. The state investment for 2006–2010 was around 310 million USD (National Assembly of Vietnam 2004).

  15. Figures on forest-cover area are controversial though—some observers refute claims of substantial afforestation in Vietnam (Sunderlin and Huynh 2005).

  16. As appears on the right-hand side of Fig. 6, administrative levels are located at multiple institutional levels.

  17. The state investment funds that concern production forest are only for the establishment of “forest with rare and precious tree species with a production cycle of 30 years or more” (Prime Minister of Government of Vietnam 1999).

  18. Fence-breaking is used here to describe acts of autonomy (Malesky 2004). Examples include the creation of illegal land markets, trade violations (Malesky 2004) or the modification of central policies for land allocation when transferred into provincial guidelines (Sikor 2004).

  19. Black-boxing is the process of considering only the input and output of a complex phenomenon and thus conceiving its internal nature as immutable and unquestionable (cf. Latour 1987).

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Acknowledgments

This paper emerged from my doctoral research, conducted at Newcastle University in 2004–2008, in collaboration with the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Vietnamese Soil and Fertilisers Research Institute within the MSEC programme. My sincere thanks to my PhD supervisors Dr. Jaime M. Amezaga, Prof. Ian R. Calder and Dr. Andy R. G. Large at Newcastle University and to Dr. Didier Orange (IRD) for their guidance and support during the time this framework was developed and tested. The development of this framework greatly benefited from discussions with Prof. Elinor Ostrom and with the participants of the PhD School “The Challenge of Self-Governance in Complex, Globalizing Economies: Responding to Walter Eucken’s Challenge” at the Institute of Forestry Economics of the Albert Ludwigs University, 17–26 April 2007 and of the 12th Biennal International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) conference, held in Cheltenham, 14–18 July 2008. My PhD study was conducted thanks to the financial support of IRD, IWMI and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs through an international science fellowship; of the British Council through an Entente Cordiale scholarship; and of the French Foundation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet through a “Bourse pour la Vocation” grant.

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  1. International Water Management Institute (IWMI), c/o ICRISAT, Patancheru, 502324, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Floriane Clement

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Clement, F. Analysing decentralised natural resource governance: proposition for a “politicised” institutional analysis and development framework. Policy Sci 43, 129–156 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-009-9100-8

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