Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 96, December 2013, Pages 36-50
Ecological Economics

Analysis
Explaining institutional persistence, adaptation, and transformation in East German recreational-fisheries governance after the German reunification in 1990

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.09.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Resilience and institutional economics mutually explain institutional persistence.

  • In externally induced disturbances humans tend to preserve customary institutions.

  • In externally induced disturbances humans tend to avoid transaction cost of change.

  • Actors' leadership and positions trigger a particular outcome of reorganization.

  • Attributes of disturbances can be leveraged by actors' motivations to transform.

Abstract

We investigated the capacity of a natural resource governance system to absorb a disturbance while maintaining its major structures and functions (defined as institutional resilience). Exemplified by East German recreational fisheries governance being disturbed by the German reunification, we studied why in five out of six East German states the former centralized governance system persisted while in one state a decentralized governance system was implemented. Based on resilience thinking and new institutional economics, three analytical steps were developed to assess: (1) the structure and function of the governance system, (2) the attributes of the disturbance and the reorganization process, and (3) human motivations. The centralized system persisted because leading managers wanted to preserve customary structures and functions, minimize transaction costs of change, and maintain powerful positions. This was possible because of their influential positions in the reorganization process. Our results suggest that in externally induced, fundamental, and rapid disturbances decision-makers tend to prevent transformations in their governance system. However, key managers in the sixth state faced the same disturbance but their lack of leadership and an emerging rivalry for fishing rights facilitated a transformation to decentralized governance. Thus, attributes of disturbances can be leveraged by actors' motivations in the reorganization process.

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

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