Evaluating the utility of common-pool resource theory for understanding forest governance and outcomes in Indonesia between 1965 and 2012

Abstract

While Common Pool Resource (CPR) theory has been widely applied to forestry, there are few examples of using the theory to study largescale governance. In this paper we test the applicability of CPR theory to understanding forest governance and outcomes in Indonesia between 1965 and 2012. Indonesia contains one of the world's largest tropical forests, and experienced rapid deforestation during this time frame, with forest cover dropping from close to 85% to less than 50%. Using a mixture of within case comparison and process tracing methods, we identify key variables that influenced the levels of deforestation during two time periods: before 1998, when governance was dominated by the dictatorship of President Suharto, Evaluating the utility of common-pool resource theory 305 and after 1998, when democratic governance and political decentralization were initiated, and deforestation rates fell and then rose again. Our results point to the value of CPR theory in identifying important variables that influence sustainability at large scales, however they also illustrate important limitations of CPR theory for the study of forests with large spatial extent and large numbers of users. The presence and absence of key variables from CPR theory did emerge as important causes of deforestation. However, some variables, such as strong leadership and local rule-making, appeared to work in the opposite direction as predicted by CPR theory. In addition, key variables that may have influenced deforestation rates are not well captured in CPR theory. These include the intention of the governance system, the presence of clientelistic politics, the influences of international politics and markets, and the influence of top-down governance. Given that CPR theory does not fully explain the case at hand, its applicability, as is, to large-scale commons should be treated with some caution.

Social movements as key actors in governing the commons: Evidence from community-based resource management cases across the world

“…On the one hand, management aspects such as monitoring and sanctioning may be relatively irrelevant to the robustness of CBNRM in the advent of external political economy threats; in these situations, a look into the role of political processes, like the one displayed by many of the works included in this study, can be particularly illustrating. On the other hand, as clearly demonstrated by CPR theory, one should not ignore the importance of these managerial factors on CBNRM robustness (Chhatre and Agrawal, 2008;Coleman and Steed, 2009;Cox et al, 2010;Fleischman et al, 2014), especially when collective action problems and external threats interact (Villamayor-Tomas and García-López, 2017). We should therefore aim to integrate both managerial and political economy factors into an explanation of the social and ecological outcomes of CBNRM.…”

“…Source: Ostrom (1990) as adapted by Cox et al (2010) The consolidation of the design principles as a theoretical cornerstone of CBNRM studies has raised new questions and revamped old ones. There is still rudimentary understanding about the relative relevance of the principles, whether different sub-sets of principles may be sufficient to guarantee sustainable management depending on the context (Baggio et al, 2016), or whether they apply to larger-scale political/governance settings (Fleischman et al, 2014). Additionally, there is still the question of how the principles (and CBNRM regimes more generally) emerge and become robust to changing social and ecological conditions (Agrawal, 2001).…”

Challenges and opportunities in coding the commons: problems, procedures, and potential solutions in large-N comparative case studies

“…The best practices model (Figure 1) recommends formal intercoder reliability testing on a subset of the dataset, as well as iterative intercoder agreement testing throughout and after the formal coding process (MacQueen et al 1998;Mayring 2000;Hruschka et al 2004;Guest and MacQueen 2008). We have found that this step is often missing from reports on studies of CPRs using meta-analyses (Netting 1976;Wade 1984;Berkes 1989;Ostrom 1990;McKean 1992;Baland and Platteau 1999;Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006;Cox 2014;Epstein et al 2014;Fleischman et al 2014;Villamayor-Tomas et al 2014). Hruschka et al (2004) explain that a reluctance to assess coder agreement is common in some branches of social science because: (1) researchers may generally believe that the quantification of qualitative data is unnecessary because qualitative research is a "distinct paradigm" that cannot or should not be subject to a quantitative evaluation; and…”

Governing large-scale social-ecological systems: Lessons from five cases

“…After 2005, deforestation increased, however data sources differ on the extent of this increase, with FAO data indicating that deforestation remains substantially lower than during the Suharto era (FAO 2013), while independent remote sensing estimates show it rising to higher rates than those of the early 1990s (Hansen et al 2013). See Fleischman et al (2014) for further discussion of this uncertainty.…”