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Abstract:
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"The increased use of goods and services based on natural resources--be it in the form of raw materials for production or goods for direct consumption, as a sponge for the absorption of pollutants, as an immaterial consumer commodity or ecological services for a biological system--have resulted in competing use, increasing scarcity and destruction of resources. The use of such threatened resources can be institutionally influenced and managed with the help of Institutional Resource Regimes (IR). Accordingly, there is a need for studies on institutional change and for information on the generation and alteration of IRs and the effects of different IRs on the actual use of resources.
"As we understand it, an IR is a combination of factors such as formal property and use rights (= regulative system) and the prominent programme elements of resource-specific protection and/or use policies (= policy design), whose policy design comprises specific aims with respect to protection and use, intervention instruments, actor arrangements etc.
"The paper examines if and how regimes adjust to changes in the structures of users as well as to increased use of resources and to scarcity. By comparing the historical development of IRs for five resources (forest, water, land, air and landscape) in Switzerland, we gain initial insights into the triggers of the emergence and changes of IRs. It is particularly important to identify the transition periods, i.e. those historical moments when the IR actually changed, as well as the entire development trajectories of the IR for a specific natural resource. Thus, the empirical studies will concentrate on the changes in the central elements of the policy design and property and use rights.
"Methodologically, the diachronic study for each resource will combine legal (which property rights?), policy (which protection and uses policies?), economic (which goods and services?) and scientific (which evolution of the stock of the resource?) analyses. By applying the outlined theoretical framework, we propose to examine the interaction and interlinkages of property and use rights and the relevant public policies. The purpose is also to develop the theoretical framework and to integrate institutional aspects in political guidance theory. The analysis of IRs also provides intial information about the time frame we should respect for a diachronic analysis. Furthermore, the comparison of IRs over time will offer a better understanding of the dynamic relationship between various resource uses, property and use rights, public policies and factors in the political context generating IR shifts."
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