SESMAD

External recognition and local autonomy

Variable relationship:

Ostrom (1990) and several other authors have noted that local level management can suffer from resource degradation (Commons Condition Trend) as a result of low compliance (Compliance) and social-ecological fit (Social-ecological Fit) when national governments and their agents fail to recognize the rights of communities to self-organize (External Recognition).

Such resource degradation represents a failure to fulfill the seventh of Ostrom's (1990) design principles. "In some cases, local-level management efforts fail because of factors outside the community. High on this list of factors includes interference by government officials who are reluctant to give power to locals (Pinkerton and Weinstein 1995). There are many cases in the literature where rules were established by local communities that then went out of existence. In the developing world, Western colonial governments may undermine the power of local political authorities and the resource-management rules they had enforced (Johannes 1978; Pradhan and Parks 1995)" (Quote from Acheson 2006).

Project

SESMAD

Sector(s)

Scientific Field

Component Type(s)

Status

Public

Variables

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Variable	Role	Role Explanation	Value
External recognition	Proximate independent variable	When the rights of resource users to self-organize are not formally or informally recognized by external authorities; incentives to invest in the management of natural resources is low.	Low
Compliance	Moderating independent variable	When local commons users' rules are overridden, they are unlikely to follow the rules that replace their own.	No
Social-ecological fit	Intermediate outcome	When centralized rules are imposed on local contexts and replace local rules, they may not fit well with the contexts that these local rules were adapted to.	Low
Commons condition trend	Final outcome	When groups fail to self-organize it often leads to depletion of natural resources.	Worsened

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Related Theories

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Theory	Relationship	Characterizing Variables
CBNRM design principles	nested
Failure of centralized control	related
Polycentric comanagement	nested
Social-ecological fit theory	contains

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Related Studies

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Study	Relationship
Acheson, James M. 2006. Institutional Failure in Resource Management. Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (1): 117-134.	describe
Johannes, Robert E. 1978. “Traditional Marine Conservation Methods in Oceania and Their Demise.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics: 349–364.	support
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. New York: Cambridge University Press.	support
Pinkerton, Evelyn W, and Martin Weinstein. 1995. Fisheries That Work: Sustainability through Community-Based Management. Vancouver, Canada: The David Suzuki Foundation.	support
Pradhan, A S, and P J Parks. 1995. “Environmental and Socioeconomic Linkages of Deforestation and Forest Land Use Change in the Nepal Himalaya.” Property Rights in a Social and Ecological Context. The World Bank, Washington DC, USA: 167–179.	support
Ribot, Jesse C., Arun Agrawal, and Anne M. Larson. 2006. Recentralizing While Decentralizing: How National Governments Reappropriate Forest Resources. World Development 34 (11): 1864-1886.	describe

Showing 1 to 6 of 6 entries

Social-Ecological Systems Meta-Analysis Database: Theory

External recognition and local autonomy

Variables

Related Theories

Related Studies