Institutions and the environment: the case for a political socio-economy of environmental conflicts

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This article presents a sympathetic but critical examination of institutional ecological economics (IEE)--a heterodox body of work on environmental governance--as developed (separately) by J. Paavola and A. Vatn. We highlight the theoretical limitations of IEE related to two issues: the causes of the emergence of environmental conflicts and the logics driving their regulation. These limitations are all related to the underlying theories of institutional change in which power- and legitimacy-based explanations are confusedly combined. Both authors develop a normative perspective in which legitimacy becomes the main concern. We argue that this perspective leads to contradictions in their respective approaches, and provides no or only partial insights into the conditions of the emergence and regulation of environmental conflicts. We finally highlight the conceptual adjustments (inspired from classical Marxism and regulation theory) that, in our view, are needed to deal more adequately with these issues.

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