Decentralization as an Aid to Enhancing Corruption in Romanian Forests

Abstract

"The paper brings into attention an already classical 'problem' of the commons, that of the free-rider, but in relatively new conceptual terms of corruption. I believe that recent theoretical developments on corruption from the field of social anthropology can shed light on various processes that community-based institutions confront in different areas.

"In Romania, 50% of the forests were privatized (1.5 million hectares) and a huge number of community-based institutions were established in the forest areas. A dense net of forestry institutions is beginning to work in rural Romania for managing and regulating forest-related issues in a decentralized way. Parallel with this process, storytelling about illegal logging and forest depletion is becoming a routine. The principal aim of this paper is to show where, when and how corruption arises and manifests itself in the process of decentralizing forest management in the rural areas of Romania.

"Of more general relevance to the academic debate, is to show that while the neoliberal ideology of international development agencies (International Monetary Fund, World Bank) promotes ideas like privatization and decentralization as solutions for reducing corruption, in practice privatization and decentralization do not necessarily reduce corruption, but rather link the private with the public sphere in the net of corrupt exchanges."