Agrawal, Arun (1992) Risks, Resources, and Politics: Studies of Institutions and Resource Use from Village India

Conference: Presented at "Inequality and the Commons," the third annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Washington, DC, September 17-20, 1992.

Abstract: "This study examines the formal and informal institutional arrangements for utlilizing fuelwood from community forests in a dry zone village in India. I investigate how factional struggles in the village shape the creation of new rules. The first part of the paper introduces the study of the village and the factions in it. I then detail the historical and institutional context that frames the political struggle. To explore the impact of politics, I describe and analyze the tussle over the creation of rules. The paper concludes that competing coalitions in a village can create institutional arrangements that reduce benefits available to the entire community as well as to particular factions. This conclusion stands in direct contrast to the belief that institutions emerge in response to imperatives of efficient resource utilization."