AnalysisExplaining institutional persistence, adaptation, and transformation in East German recreational-fisheries governance after the German reunification in 1990
Introduction
In a dynamic and uncertain world, social–ecological systems (SESs) are continuously challenged by disturbances. Such disturbances carry a risk of system destruction when they radically change the existing characteristics of a system such as its structure and function (e.g., Forbes et al., 2009, Zurlini et al., 2006). The challenge for humans is to navigate SESs through new conditions arising from the disturbance without risking a fundamental shift that would critically endanger the capacity of the system to support the livelihoods of the human population (Gunderson et al., 2002, Olsson et al., 2006) or the provision of valued ecosystem services. Therefore, enhancing resilience to disturbances may be a governance goal as long as the current state of the system is a desired one (Folke et al., 2002, Kinzig et al., 2003). In this context, scholars have been interested in the interplay of persistence, adaptation, and transformation to avoid undesirable regime shifts and maintain resilience in diverse social–ecological settings (Cinner et al., 2007, Pikitch et al., 2004).
The research objective in this study was to explore resilience in the specific SES of German recreational fisheries after being disturbed by the German reunification in 1990. We focused on the social system where various actors engaged in decision-making processes steer the system towards a particular state (Hughes et al., 2005, Olsson et al., 2006). We found the SES being resilient because the activity of recreational fishing as the main relationship within the SES continued in all parts of East Germany after the reunification; hence, the SES maintained its basic function. However, we ascertained varying processes of persistence, adaptation, and transformation within the governance system in the reorganization phase. Specifically, in five of six East German states a centralized governance system persisted similar to the one that existed in the GDR.1 In the sixth state the centralized approach was transformed to a decentralized governance system on local level as it is common in West Germany. Accordingly, we formulated the following research question: what are the reasons explaining the different outcomes of the reorganization process in the six East German states?
We combined system-based resilience thinking with the explanatory power of actor-based new institutional economics (NIE) to answer the research question. Resilience and SES literature call for interdisciplinary studies, and provide initial frameworks to study SESs from a social science perspective (e.g., Anderies et al., 2004, Hunt et al., 2013, Ostrom, 2007, Walker et al., 2006). However, we did not find an analytical framework explicitly including NIE theories into resilience concepts that also stressed the importance of the attributes of disturbances in reorganization phases. Thus, based on both research branches, we developed three analytical steps for the present case study.
The first two steps (assessment of the structure and function of the governance system, and of attributes of the disturbance and the conditions in the reorganization phase) were derived from resilience concepts. The third step (evaluation of actors' motivations in reorganization processes) was based on concepts from NIE. Resilience thinking allows for an in-depth understanding of the components and dynamics of non-linear, interlinked and multi-scale changes of SESs, while NIE provides actor-based analytical concepts such as social capital and transaction cost economics to explain human behavior and motivations, e.g., in institutional change situations (North, 1990). We developed these three analytical steps from the literature with the aim to understand each part as interactive component similarly influencing the resilience of the specific social system studied here.
There are numerous studies on institutional change and persistence in NIE covering all kinds of aspects explaining those processes (Libecap, 2007, North, 1991, Paavola, 2007). The strength of the present paper is the interdisciplinary combination of NIE with resilience thinking, and the provision of a three-step analytical framework to explain institutional change and persistence exemplified by the SES of East German recreational fisheries governance. As suggested by Ostrom, 1990, Ostrom, 2007, the application of analytical frameworks enables researchers to identify patterns of interactions between the framework-embedded concepts explaining a particular outcome such as persistence or change in governance systems. Besides the analytical novelty in this paper, the case study of East German recreational fisheries governance provided a comparative analysis of six cases (East German states) under the condition of a unique natural experiment situation. Being in the same situation of a fundamental socio-political change after the reunification in 1990, one state showed a different outcome after the reorganization process than the other five states in East Germany. By applying the three-step analytical framework, we were able to explain the difference in the outcome and to assess which of the applied concepts had explanatory power.
The remaining of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the case study of German recreational fisheries in more detail and explicates the phenomenon of change and persistence in the governance system. Section 3 describes concepts and theories of resilience thinking and NIE that formed the conceptual basis of our analysis. Section 4 presents the analytical approach, the operationalization process, and data and methods. Section 5 contains the results, and Section 6 the discussion.
Section snippets
Persistence and Change in German Recreational Fisheries Governance
Recreational fishing or angling is defined as “fishing of aquatic animals that do not constitute the individual's primary resource to meet nutritional needs and are not generally sold or otherwise traded on export, domestic or black markets” (FAO, 2012, p. v). In 2002, there were about 3.3 million German anglers older than 14 years (Arlinghaus, 2006) and as in most industrialized countries (Arlinghaus et al., 2002) anglers are currently the dominant users of inland fisheries resources in Germany (
Resilience Thinking
Folke et al. (2010) defines resilience as “the capacity of a SES to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds” (p. 20). These thresholds separate alternative basins of attraction, defined as a state in which a system tends to remain while actors in this system hesitate to transform to other basins of attraction (Walker et al., 2004). For example, the two different governance systems in German recreational fisheries – decentralized versus centralized – represent such
Three Analytical Steps and Operationalization of Theoretical Concepts
Based on central concepts of resilience thinking and NIE, we derived three analytical steps (Fig. 3) we found best to explain the variation in outcomes of the reorganization phase in East German recreational fisheries:
- •
1) An assessment of system's characteristics (i.e., structure and function) of the East German recreational fisheries governance system before and after the reunification in 1990.
- •
2) A characterization of the attributes of the disturbance and the conditions in the reorganization
Structure
All East German interviewees described the structure of recreational fisheries governance in the GDR and its persistence and change after the reunification in a similar way (Table 2). During the reorganization process new fisheries acts and additional regulations were negotiated and implemented in each of the six newly formed East German states. Recreational fisheries governance was subrogated from GDR territory to state level to conform to the German constitution. The new civil law allowed
Discussion
The three analytical steps in our study enabled us to assess the institutional resilience of East German recreational fisheries governance after the disturbance caused by the German reunification in 1990. With respect to the first step, the assessment of the system's characteristics and the definition of recognition criteria helped us to identify which particular structures and functions persisted, adapted, or transformed in the governance systems in each of the six East German states after the
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the contemporary witnesses who made this research possible by sharing their knowledge throughout the long interview hours. We thank Xavier Basurto, Melf-Hinrich Ehlers, Wibke Crewett, Andreas Thiel, Jes Weigelt and four reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Funding for this study was provided by the Adaptfish-Project grant to R.A. by the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Community (www.adaptfish.igb-berlin.de). The finalization of the project received
References (58)
- et al.
New paradigms for supporting the resilience of marine ecosystems
Trends Ecol. Evol.
(2005) Do property rights promote investment but cause deforestation? Quasi-experimental evidence from Nicaragua
J. Environ. Econ. Manag.
(2013)Institutions and environmental governance: a reconceptualization
Ecol. Econ.
(2007)- et al.
Institutional ecological economics
Ecol. Econ.
(2005) - et al.
Disturbance patters in a social–ecological system at multiple scales
Ecol. Complex.
(2006) Uncertainty, evolution, and economic theory
J. Polit. Econ.
(1950)- et al.
A framework to analyze the robustness of social–ecological systems from an institutional perspective
Ecol. Soc.
(2004) Der unterschätzte Angler: Zukunftsperspektiven für die Angelfischerei in Deutschland
(2006)- et al.
Reconciling traditional inland fisheries management and sustainability in industrialized countries, with emphasis on Europe
Fish Fish.
(2002) - et al.
Human ecology and resource sustainability: the importance of institutional diversity
Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst.
(1995)
From community-based resource management to complex systems: the scale issue and marine commons
Ecol. Soc.
Scale and cross-scale dynamics: governance and information in a multilevel world
Ecol. Soc.
Socioeconomic thresholds that affect use of customary fisheries management tools
Conserv. Biol.
Fishermen Friend: German Anglers Call Cold War Truce. The Guardian: 20 March
A property rights-based view on management of inland recreational fisheries: contrasting common and public fishing rights regimes in Germany and the U.S.A
Assessing an adaptive cycle in a social system under external pressure to change: the importance of intergroup relations in recreational fisheries governance
Ecol. Soc.
Abduction
FAO recreational fisheries
Disturbance, response, and persistence in self-organized forested communities: analysis of robustness and resilience in five communities in southern Indiana
Ecol. Soc.
Resilience and sustainable development: building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations
Ambio
Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability
Ecol. Soc.
High resilience in the Yamal-Nenets social–ecological system, West Siberian Arctic, Russia
PNAS
Experteninterviews und qualitative Inhaltsanalyse
Surprises and sustainability: cycles of renewal in the Everglades
Leadership, social capital and incentives promote successful fisheries
Nature
Particular requirements for institutional analysis in nature-related sectors
Eur. Rev. Agric. Econ.
Continuity and change in social–ecological systems: the role of institutional resilience
Ecol. Soc.
Resilience and stability of ecological systems
Ann. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst.
Illustrating the critical role of human dimensions research for understanding and managing recreational fisheries within a social–ecological system framework
Fish. Manag. Ecol.
Cited by (11)
Does the Common Agricultural Policy enhance farming systems’ resilience? Applying the Resilience Assessment Tool (ResAT) to a farming system case study in the Netherlands
2020, Journal of Rural StudiesCitation Excerpt :Likewise, Swanson et al. (2009) identified specific characteristics for policies to function under complex, dynamic, and uncertain conditions, such as variation through multiple policies to address the same issue to increase the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes in uncertain times, regular policy review processes to evaluate effectiveness and continuous learning, and pilots to test assumptions relating to emerging issues. Moreover, Daedlow et al. (2013) discussed factors that determine the resilience of natural resource governance systems. For instance, they revealed in their case study that external processes of change and disturbances with high uncertainty may prevent decision makers from adapting or transforming the governance system.
Serving the public good: Empirical links between governance and research investment in the context of global environmental change
2016, Ecological EconomicsCitation Excerpt :Nadeau, 2015:106). To date, understanding these relationships between science and governance has most often been approached on a case-by-case basis (Daedlow et al., 2013; Schouten et al., 2012; Thiel, 2014), or at a conceptual level (Biermann et al., 2012; Biermann and Gupta, 2011; Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011; Galaz et al., 2012; Ison et al., 2013; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al., 2012; Nilsson and Persson, 2012; Zografos and Howarth, 2010). Institutional economics has been influential in helping to establish new or emerging modes of environmental governance (Paavola and Adger, 2005) that facilitate more productive relations between science and decision-making, including adaptive governance, networked governance, and transition management (for a recent overview, see Evans, 2012).
Adapting to environmental and market change: Insights from Fish Producer Organizations in Portugal
2014, Ocean and Coastal ManagementCitation Excerpt :In cases of reactively adaptive POs, adaptive response to ‘tipping over’ of market crisis has implied transformation of the market model via internal reorganization, which has led to restructuring of power relations among actors. Although found to trigger PO adaptability, cases of resistance and inertia amongst fishers to PO adaptation response (e.g. new market strategy) also show that in the long run, attributes of crisis might be leveraged by actor motivations in the reorganization process, also found in Deadlow et al. (2013) and further discussed below. Other than market crisis, resource scarcity is built slowly and steadily.
Fourteen propositions for resilience, fourteen years later
2022, Ecology and SocietyAssessing countries’ social-ecological resilience to shifting marine commercial species
2021, Scientific Reports