Interactions between formal and informal institutions in community, private and state forest contexts in Ghana

Paul Osei-Tutu, Michael Pregernig and Benno Pokorny

Forest Policy and Economics, 2015, vol. 54, issue C, 26-35

Abstract: In the context of post-colonial countries, formal institutions of forest management often do not perform to expectations when they are introduced into local communities. Against this background, many studies have recommended the use of informal institutions in the pursuit of officially-recognized local forest management. But informal institutions and formal institutions do not operate independently of each other in influencing how people act. Therefore, it is important to understand how formal and informal local forestry institutions interact with each other. This paper provides insights based on qualitative study of community, private and state forest contexts in Ghana. The findings indicate that when formal and informal local forestry institutions have common goals and both are functional, they complement each other to achieve the common goals. When they have common goals but only one institution is functional, the functional institution substitutes the non-functional one. When the goals diverge, the more functional institution outcompetes the other. When both institutions are non-functional, there is an institutional void that creates room for unregulated resource use.

Keywords: Institutions; Institutional interaction; Local forest management; Ghana (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934115000258
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:54:y:2015:i:c:p:26-35

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2015.01.006

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().