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• Why do some locals choose to assist rangers and report on poachers, while others refrain from doing so? • We surveyed residents in and near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. • People that are afraid of rangers and perceive them as corruptible are less willing to assist in information-sharing. • Seeing poaching as condemnable increases people's propensity to report on illegal activities. • To effectively involve locals in rule enforcement, policy needs to change how communities perceive both officials and rules. Conservation rules – e.g. protected area regulations that aim to reduce wildlife poaching – often have an inherent challenge: while relying on that locals should share intelligence about observed crime to authorities, such rules tend to be weakly supported by these communities. Enforcement officials of conservation authorities (such as rangers) are seldom trusted, and this in turn raises doubts about whether locals will provide sufficient information about conservation crime, which is not the least needed in all those settings where a small number of rangers are tasked to monitor vast areas. The case of wildlife poaching in African countries illustrates this tension, where rangers are few, sometimes have a dubious record, and where offenders often are on good terms with locals. This article asks: Why do some locals choose to assist rangers and report on poachers, while others refrain from doing so? We conducted a survey in the years 2017–2018 directed towards 2300 residents in and near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, where a major challenge is both subsistence and commercial forms of poaching. Our focus was primarily on subsistent poaching. We also conducted in-depth interviews with rangers and park officials to corroborate that our quantitative insights point to the same description of the situation. Our survey demonstrates that people that are afraid of rangers and perceive them as corruptible are less willing to assist in information-sharing. Seeing poaching as condemnable increases people's propensity to report on illegal activities. In contrast, individuals' stakes in conservation and perceptions of wildlife as threatened do not predict our outcome. Our findings suggest that to achieve a more thorough involvement of locals in the enforcement of conservation laws, policy needs to change how communities perceive both officials and rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previously sharing many ecological and institutional conditions, the fisheries reform processes undertaken in South Africa and Namibia in the early 1990s have produced highly different institutional trajectories. In Namibia, the institutional arrangements governing fisheries management have turned Namibia into a regional success case with relatively low degrees of illegal fishing and poaching, but in South Africa, the institutional arrangements are generally considered to be weak and characterized by noncompliance – and poaching is widespread. The overall objective of this article is to provide an institutional perspective on how to understand the dynamics of these different trajectories. In particular, the article concludes that the notion of path dependence, historical legacies, and distributional struggles provide important insights to the observed developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is democracy favorable or adverse for the management of marine resources? While some studies find democracy to increase the likelihood of achieving sustainable development, others propose that democracy rather has negative effects on the environment. This paper contributes explicitly to this debate, but also adds insights from research arguing that the effects of democracy are conditioned by surrounding institutions. Building on this literature, we argue that the way democracy works – whether it is an instrument for collective action beneficial to the environment or an instrument for patronage and clientelism – depends on levels of economic development. The overall objective of the article is to test this proposition empirically. Employing time-series cross-section analysis and using Marine Trophic Index as a proxy for the health of marine ecosystems, we investigate the impact of democracy on the marine environment in a global sample from 1972 to 2006. The analysis provides interesting insights regarding the conditional role of economic development. We report negative effects of democracy in low income settings, but find that this pattern is reversed when economic development has reached a certain threshold. Finally, we discuss how democracy affects the prospects for sustainable development and based on our conclusions offer suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article develops and tests three hypotheses concerning the effects of levels of democracy on levels of overfishing in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results show that the more democratic a country is, the more successful it is in protecting marine environments. However, this effect disappears during turbulent times and periods of rapid political change. The analysis also shows that democracy has a stronger effect on environmental performance than do levels of corruption and government effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The argument developed and tested in this paper contends that the lack of success in past decades when it comes to increasing water coverage levels – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – is attributable to the institutional arrangements under which land is managed. In short, the starting point is that if water coverage levels are to increase, some form of investment in land, housing, water infrastructure, or wells needs to be undertaken – primarily by citizens themselves. However, in order for such investments to take place, citizens need some certainty that they will reap the rewards from their investments. This certainty is suggested to result from property rights to land, i.e., land tenure. This argument is tested through a mixed methodological approach including quantitative analysis and a comparative review of land policies of the two contrasting cases of Botswana and Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Focuses on state capacity in general and on states' efforts to foster collective action and compliance in particular. • Improves our understanding of recent decades' increased militarization of wildlife management. • Builds on unique interview data with park rangers and public officials. • Coercive capacities are necessary but needs to be complemented with cooperative assurances in order to ensure compliance. This article focuses on social control and states' broadcasting of power over inhospitable terrains. It uses the case of conservation of wildlife in two African Peace Parks to explore how the involved states strike the balance between cooperation and coercion in their efforts to mold citizen behavior toward quasi-voluntary compliance. The case of wildlife management highlights pertinent issues related to compliance and collective action and have the potential to contribute substantially to the general literature on state capacity. More specifically, while the increased militarization of wildlife management has been criticized for justifying coercive and repressive policies, it can be seen as a result of the involved states' lack of social control and ensuing inability to foster quasi-voluntary compliance through other means than coercive ones. Yet, while coercion is not a sufficient condition for fostering compliance, it is still important to recognize that it is indeed a necessary one. Building on unique interview data from two major transboundary parks – Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area and Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park – we explore how existing theoretical arguments play out in practice and how the challenge to foster quasi-voluntary compliance is being addressed. The results show that actors given the task to implement wildlife policy certainly show awareness about that coercion needs to be complemented with cooperative assurances in order to foster quasi-voluntary compliance. Furthermore, the study provides insights into how other social organizations such as traditional leaders might challenge the state in terms of being the predominant actors in setting up rules governing wildlife. We thank the Swedish Research Council for supporting this research. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for constructive comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine how droughts affect trust in leaders, linking climate data to African survey respondents, 2002–2018. • We report negative effects of droughts on people's trust in their president and the effects increase with drought severity. • In line with theories of regional favoritism, droughts increase trust in leaders in leader birth regions and in capitals. • In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. • With extreme weathers becoming more frequent and severe, we will likely see more fluctuation in trust in political leaders. Droughts can affect people's trust in political leaders positively, through rallying effects, or negatively, through blame attribution. We examine how drought conditions affect trust in leaders in the context of Africa. We link high-precision exogenous climate data to survey respondents, 2002–2018, and report moderate negative effects of drought conditions on people's trust in their president. These negative effects increase with the severity of drought conditions. The political economy of favoritism, where some regions are preferentially treated by rulers, should result in heterogeneous effects across territories. We find that trust in leaders increases in capital regions and in leader birth regions during dry conditions. In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. This is in line with the idea that capital regions and leader birth regions could be preferentially treated in the aftermath of droughts. Understanding these processes further is important given their salience because of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]