Saturday, June 28, 2008

Historical Institutionalism

Another theoretical approach I've been trying to grapple with the last
couple of weeks are some ideas that come out of historical institutionalism.

Basically, I've been looking for ways in which exogenous shocks and
political structures have changed institutions in particular ways that
might impact outcomes in forestry.

In particular, I was hoping to find ways in which the Guatemalan civil
war--a shock pretty much exogenous to anything related to
decentralization (or forestry)--had impacted institutions at the local
level--perhaps by destroying civil society or social capital, or maybe
by displacing people in such a way that institutions that come out of
older, Mayan traditions have disappeared.

However, I haven't found anything.

Maybe this isn't such a surprising thing, though. I asked the locals
what the effects of the civil war were on Sta. Catarina, and they said
there were very few direct effects--they didn't believe any locals had
been killed in the conflict. This contrasts pretty strongly with some
parts of the highlands, which were cleared of their residents, and whole
villages were razed.

So maybe this municipality represents the baseline case, and unfortunate
cases of scorched earth military offenses in the highlands will
represent the critical cases for the elaboration of these ideas.

...we shall see...

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