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What is the relationship between counterinsurgency and institution-building? When do wartime institutions persist once conflict has ended? Classic theories examine how war spurs new institutions within the central state, while extensive research on rebel governance examines how insurgent actors forge new rules to garner civilian compliance and cement control. However, the legacies of armed conflict for state institutions in the theater of war remain relatively neglected. We theorize the process of local counterinsurgent institution-building and the drivers of institutional endurance following counterinsurgency. By analyzing two local counterinsurgent institutions in Nicaragua and a shadow case drawn from Indonesia, we find that while state leaders may generate new institutional arrangements to elicit information and garner resources, institutional persistence is driven by local reappropriation as communities pursue their own postwar governance and development goals. Overall, this paper contributes a new understanding for the divergent postwar paths of local institutions generated amid counterinsurgency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the involvement and role of Indonesian government ministries and agencies in managing Rohingya refugees in Aceh. It explores key factors influencing the refugee situation, including policy frameworks, resource allocation, and inter-agency coordination. Using qualitative interviews with officials from relevant departments, the research provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges and strategies employed. Findings highlight significant gaps in coordination and resource management, suggesting the need for enhanced policies and greater international cooperation. The study contributes to the understanding of refugee management in Indonesia and offers recommendations for improving policy implementation and support mechanisms for refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rural and peri‑urban areas of Central America, community water organizations (CWOs) provide water to 60 % of the population, thereby playing a pivotal role in achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, the underlying environmental, climatic, and institutional factors explaining the adoption of volumetric pricing from these water providers and its effect on service delivery are typically overlooked in the literature. In this paper, we address two issues. First, we test whether volumetric pricing affects the service water delivery in a rural setting, drawing on a random sample of cross-sectional data on 154 CWOs in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. We find that volumetric pricing is associated with substantially more successful water delivery, even when conditioned on institutional capacity, environmental attributes, climatic conditions, and country-fixed effects. Despite this strong relationship, volumetric pricing has yet to be widely adopted, particularly in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Therefore, as the second goal, we try to identify the institutional and socio-ecological conditions in which volumetric pricing is adopted. We find that volumetric pricing is more likely used when communities (1) experience adverse environmental and climatic conditions associated with water scarcity and (2) have greater institutional capacity. Our results highlight the importance of examining the social-ecological system to assess the performance and adoption of water management institutions

The development of tourism villages in Bogor Regency, particularly in Sukajadi Village, Tamansari District, confronts various challenges, encompassing issues about establishing local tourism management institutions, small-scale business development, promotional strategies, product packaging, and environmental sustainability. These challenges are addressed through the implementation of the Community Partnership Empowerment (PKM) initiative within the framework of Community-Based Tourism (CBT) in collaboration with the Tourism Awareness Group (Sukajadi Village) as the partnering institution. The objectives of the PKM CBT endeavour are as follows: 1) To enhance tourism awareness among Sukajadi village residents; 2) To augment the capacity of the Pokdarwis institution in effectively managing the tourism potential of Sukajadi Village as a CBT destination; 3) To improve the proficiency in crafting promotional content for tourist attractions to reach individuals beyond Bogor Regency and City; and 4) To enhance the skills in packaging products of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to render them more appealing as flagship offerings. The conducted activities encompass 1) The execution of the CBT Development Workshop involving diverse representatives of community figures; 2) The House Charm Competition targeting the general public; 3) Training sessions on the Analysis of SME and Village Tourism Potential with the participation of Pokdarwis management and community figures and; and 4) Training on the packaging of tourism products for SMEs, coupled with the promotion of CBT to Pokdarwis management. The outcomes of this PKM initiative reveal an elevation in knowledge, attitudes, and competencies related to tourism management among Pokdarwis administrators. At the institutional level, PKM serves to enhance the planning capabilities of Pokdarwis in the development of community-based tourism and the promotion of tourism initiatives. This, in turn, is anticipated to positively impact the local community's income through CBT enterprises and foster a heightened awareness of tourism among the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted 13 in-depth qualitative interviews with Black owners of barbershops or beauty salons within predominantly Black neighborhoods to explore the social mechanisms that aid in suppressing crime. Four emergent themes arose: (1) community anchors and safe havens, (2) violence interrupters, (3) life counselors, and (4) COVID-19 disruption and lessons of resiliency. Findings from this study contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature focused on "local institutions" and the importance of these businesses in building informal social control within Black communities. Further, these findings enhance our understanding of underlying place-based crime prevention mechanisms. This study promotes these institutions as key components in future crime prevention and public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid waste management is a global concern that has been handled in several ways in different parts of the world. In cities of the Global North, measures meant to prevent or minimise solid waste generation and its associated challenges are based on the waste management hierarchy, whereas in cities in the Global South, the active involvement of the public and private sectors is well documented. Existing studies cover practices of solid waste collection, reuse, recycling and landfilling by private formal and private informal actors. The term informal actors has often been used to refer to itinerant waste buyers, waste pickers and recyclers. Local African institutions existing in marketplaces – such as women known as 'market queens' or 'commodity queens' and market chairmen, whose management roles are not necessarily geared towards livelihood creation – have, however, been neglected. This lack of attention to the roles of local institutions in solid waste management potentially undermines efforts aimed at waste minimisation and the achievement of policy measures such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Sustainable Development Goal 11) that seeks to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Hence, based on the cases of the Kaneshie, Kantamanto and Madina markets in Accra, empirical evidence of the role that local market institutions play in solid waste management is provided. Based on this, an argument is made for removing structural barriers impeding local market institutions' participation in existing systems for managing urban market environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although feminist scholarship has discussed intersectionality extensively, few studies have addressed its implementation in public policies. This article fills that gap with an empirical study of the obstacles and enabling factors in implementing intersectionality in the Madrid City Council. We focus on the multiple meanings, actors, and structures involved in translating policy planning into concrete measures. Through a content analysis of policy documents, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, our qualitative study identifies five key factors that hinder the implementation of intersectionality-informed policies: the absence of a legal framework and precise guidelines; the multiple and contrasting interpretations of intersectionality; the lack of training; the compartmentalized work structure and culture; and the unavailability and misuse of data. These findings contribute to the scholarship on the implementation of intersectionality in public policies and provide empirical-based recommendations to overcome the identified obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the main findings in the Special issue on Pastoralism in South Asia from the eight papers based on research conducted in the Himalayan region of South Asia. An overview is presented of pastoralism in the Himalayan region, including India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. Drawing parallels with the global stresses to pastoralists, papers in this special issue highlighted three sets of contemporary stresses to the pastoralists of the Himalayan region viz. (a) lack of herding labour, associated changing aspirations of youth and decline in traditional knowledge systems; (b) continued stresses from the state and between the formal and informal institutions; and (c) climatic stresses and associated impacts on the rangeland and livestock health. A synthesis of findings from all eight case studies suggests how the issues around pastoral livelihoods and rangeland management in the Himalayan region are entangled across social, political and ecological dimensions. However, instead of only being impacted by the stresses, the pastoral communities are showing adaptations to various kinds of uncertainties and variabilities. Based on these findings from across eight sites in the Himalayan region, we argue that understanding of the problems as well as proposed solutions from the policymakers should be tailored according to the particular social, political and ecological contexts. Other than the issues given prominence in this special issue, the role of markets and social security are some of the other important concerns to be addressed in the region, which can be best addressed by creating an interface between pastoralists and policymakers, practitioners and the government, while making the best use of pastoral knowledge and their way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the concept idea of 'human rights city' and explores its practice. It starts from the concepts of human rights cities and subsidiarity to explain what a human rights city is and delves into the existing literature identifying the challenges to guarantee human rights in local contexts, such as the legal framework, education and training, the institutional structure, and the resources. Our article is based on an empirical-based study of Madrid Human Rights Plan (2017–2019). We carried out semi-structured interviews, focus group, and participant observation to grasp the obstacles that civil servants encounter in the implementation of the Plan. We identify five types of obstacles that we classify as conceptual, ideological, legal, organisational, and budgetary. Our study questions the idea that the local context, just because of its proximity to the citizenry, is the best equipped level of government to guarantee human rights. Without proper training and resources human rights can be lost in translation. Through the identification of such obstacles in a specific case study, we contribute to the academic debate on human rights in practice with the aim of fostering its guarantee in local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to land for meeting biological and residential needs plays a vital role in daily lives of peoples worldwide. This access must be specific, sustainable, and pave the way for future growth. Iran as one of the developing countries with a petroleum-based economy suffers from a high centralization and non-participatory decision-making, and weaknesses of institutional capacities in urban land management system. This situation has undesirable influence on councils and municipalities as local institutions in urban land management. Building and developing proper capacities at the local levels not only lead to enhance the performance of local institutions, but also can contribute to applying good land governance. In this regard, this research intends to identify the institutional capacities by which councils and municipalities can enhance their abilities to apply good land governance at the local level. This research is an applied one, using descriptive-analytic method. Data collection is based on of documentary and field survey methods. Data analysis is conducted by Spearman's rank correlation, linear regression, and path analysis in SPSS. The obtained results reveal that Iranian local institutions need to develop capacities more in land registration, taxation, and localism areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade rural conflicts in Mozambique suffered an acceleration, due to large land investments by foreign subjects, especially in the central and northern parts of the country. Through a qualitative approach, this research aims firstly to typify, and then to interpret, the dynamics of interconnectedness of the Mozambican social “alternative” movements in relation to the neoliberal model as well as their strategies of change. The picture highlights grassroots organisations and movements with anticapitalist features, building transnational networks of a non-institutional cooperation.

There is a growing consensus within both policy and academic circles, including various schools of political, legal, and economic thought, that institutions matter and that the quality of institutions and governments makes an important difference for economic development. However, while the institutional literature has extensively discussed different types of institutions and their importance, only a few quantitative measures of formal institutions and their quality are available. What is more, most analyses referring to the quality of public institutions concern the national or regional level and the issue at the local level is relatively understudied. The purpose of the article is to fill this gap in two ways. The first one is to identify territorial differentiation of the quality of public institutions at the local level in Poland; the second one, to explain the reasons of the differentiation of institutional capacities in the context of historical, cultural, and social factors. The research has shown that the quality of public institutions is highly related to historical circumstances. However, although their impact is strong, the historical conditions are definitely not the only factor influencing local institutional capital in Poland, as they appear to be deeply affected also by the level of urbanization and the degree of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study builds the existing scenarios of the Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) through in-depth investigation for further exploration of policy instruments as well as amendment of Standing Orders on Disaster and scopes the disaster risk reduction of the NBS journal. The objectives were to investigate the efficiency and role of local institutions with three (pre, during and post) phases of disaster risk reduction, considering three pillars (social, economic and environmental) of sustainability and to investigate the satisfaction level of local communities over the activities of local institutions round the year. Considering the cyclone and storm surge vulnerabilities, three coastal villages from three different coastal districts of Bangladesh were selected purposively to collect primary data through household questionnaire survey and key informants’ interviews. Besides, secondary data were also collected from various government and non-governmental sources. Both descriptive and inferential statistics are used to analyze data. The findings of this study present diverse institutional efficiency of different study locations at different phases of disasters. At pre-disaster period, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) provide services more efficiently than Union Parisad (UP) and Red Crescent Society (RCS) in the study area. Cyclone Preparedness Program (CPP) volunteers disseminate early warning massages at pre-disaster period more efficiently than any other institutions but most of the people ignore the warning massages and hardly take the decision for seeking refugee to cyclone shelter during disaster. At post-disaster stage, UP and NGOs cannot play appropriate role due to bureaucratic complexities, corruption and nepotism of local government. However, the present study findings expected to provide useful guidelines to the concerned policy maker for ensuring sustainable disaster management in the coastal regions of Bangladesh.

This study uses evidence from three rural agricultural communities in Nigeria to examine the role and relevance of local institutions and knowledge with regard to climate change adaptation. It argues that the formal climate change response framework has failed to incorporate local institutions as critical components of adaptation strategies, even though local institutions and people have age-old niches and decades of experience in confronting adverse weather events. The findings indicate that these communities have over the years developed critical norms around ensuring agricultural production and stemming the impacts of adverse climatic conditions without government support. The study underpins the resilience of these institutions in climate change adaptation and finds that, despite long bouts with gully erosion and flooding, these communities have over time developed practices and roles that ensure survival. Thus, these communities possess bastions of creativity and experience that may be useful in formal adaptation and resilience strategies to climate change in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High hopes are pinned on tourism and its catalytic potential to foster growth in remote rural areas. In the Zambezi region of northeastern Namibia, tourism plays a key role in the design of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes for nature conservation. Local communities form conservancies, small village-based entities of bottom-up nature conservation activities. These conservancies are granted rights for the use of natural resources, which are then transferred to tourism investors and trophy-hunting companies. Thus, conservancies partly determine tourism's developmental outcomes on a local level. By applying a global production network (GPN) approach, the objective is, first, to assess how much of the turnover generated in the Zambezi region remains in the region and, second, to examine the extent to which conservancies, as newly formed local institutions, enable communities to capture value from tourism. A mixed-methods approach is applied, using a business survey, qualitative interview data and financial reports which allow a calculation of value capture. Roughly 20% of the value generated by the tourism industry in the Zambezi region is captured locally. In addition, conservancies play a key role in the GPN, acting as hinges between the local and the global: conservancies are involved in the production of the resource, mediate in strategic coupling processes and use regulatory and bargaining power to capture value. Conservancies therefore have the potential to increase local gains from tourism. On the one hand, these results underline the importance of local institutions for value capture in GPN analysis. On the other hand, as local linkages are limited and the level of local ownership is low, policies are needed that ensure the participation of local residents beyond direct transfer payments from private enterprises to communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of studies on women’s participation in festive rituals and cultural customs in Spain. Demands by women to participate in manifestations of what is today termed intangible cultural heritage began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, feminist anthropology has followed these processes of protest and demands for change. Events on the ground have prompted a revision of theoretical frameworks for understanding these phenomena, placing greater emphasis on the interrelationship between the social and symbolic order within the sex/gender system. In this sense, in Spain, and especially in the Basque Country, there has been an intersection between academic research, the actions of self-organised women and the public administration, bringing into dialogue the theoretical, political-activist, and institutional spheres. In this article, we focus on the strategies and practical ways in which equality is sought, materialised, and performed in festive rituals, plotting their evolution to more democratic, participatory, and egalitarian events. We conclude that the study of the fiesta from a gender perspective is crucial to rethinking the way we analyse rituals, processes of change and continuity in festive customs in relation to feminist demands. At the same time, it is a source of inspiration when plotting processes of social and symbolic transformation that question or reverse the patriarchal and hierarchical order of our societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory action research in communal grazing lands can inform end users on cost-effective methods for restoring land to improve local livelihoods and environmental quality in terms of reduced degradation and enhanced ecosystem services. A multistakeholder process involving producers, development practitioners, and researchers is demonstrated for conducting action research to restore degraded communal grazing lands in East Africa. Producer-managed trials provided actionable evidence on brief resting durations and reseeding in pastoral rangelands in Kenya, and on improved forages and weeding in grazing exclosures in the Ethiopian highlands. The usefulness of this evidence is demonstrated through quantitative data and stated or revealed preferences of livestock producers. Local land management institutions and government and civil society practitioners confirmed the utility of the results to land management practice and policy, while spontaneous local up-scaling of improved forages in exclosures affirmed their scalability. These results are attributable to elements of the action research process, including prioritization of practical producer needs, close involvement of local institutions able to take action, collaborative design of producer-managed trials, and generation of evidence applicable in scaling. Among the restoration options tested, those more successful in trials and preferred by producers tended to have moderate (or low) costs, complexity, time to returns, and risk, suggesting possible optimization of trade-offs among options, such as between the potential performance of an option and its risk. Robust options that balance consistency with effectiveness may be good candidates for scaling. In communal grazing lands facing varied constraints to restoration, using research methodology responsive to institutional stakeholders at and above local level is an effective strategy for deriving scalable restoration approaches for win-win gains in livelihoods and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the determinants of foreign direct investment in the Southern Central Coast (SCC) region of Vietnam over the period 2007–2016 by a spatial econometric approach. The estimation results show that FDI inflows in the SCC region are attracted by the cheap labor cost of the host province, and provinces that own national seaports have great advantages in attracting FDI, confirming the vertical FDI form in the SCC region. Interestingly, skilled labor force in the surrounding provinces has a positive impact on FDI inflows in the host province. In particular, regarding the role of local institutional quality, the estimation shows that the legal institutions and level of social security in the host province play important roles in attracting FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Confluenze. Rivista di Studi Iberoamericani is the property of Universita di Bologna, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Adaptive capacity (AC) is a widely used concept denoting assets or resources that people or a system can draw upon to cope with environmental change. When applied to a community, careful definition and measurement of AC is essential for identifying patterns and generating findings that may be useful for policy and transferable to other places. We identified and compared measures of 22 indicators for eight communities on Alaska's North Slope, based on consistency with theory, availability of data, and measurable community differences. Despite many cultural and institutional similarities, we found systematic differences among communities in each of the seven AC domains measured. Although every community had strengths in some domains, we could divide communities into three groups: high overall AC (one community), moderate overall AC (four communities), and low overall AC (three communities), based on average rank order across all domains. The comparative approach we developed can be helpful in identifying productive policy opportunities for strengthening community AC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of legislative size on public spending on education, in a context of restricted suffrage. In 1860s Italy, male teachers were pivotal voters and were directly hired and fired by the local council. As a consequence, local legislators gained large political payoffs from public spending on education. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that townships that were quasi-randomly assigned a larger council spent more on primary education by 6% of a standard deviation per additional councilman. Consistent with a pork-barrel mechanism, the legislative size effect on spending is driven by a surge in the appointment of male teachers, while female teachers, ineligible to vote, were not affected by legislative size. Higher school spending is associated with higher public education supply and a larger student population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1996-1998 United Nation's UNTAES transitional administration, deployed for 2 years in Eastern Slavonia (Croatia), is often described as one of the most successful UN peace efforts. Now, 25 years since it was deployed, we are revisiting the region to investigate the long-term developments as they are evident in the writing of local media. This empirical research focuses on the long-term post-conflict cooperative or divisive narratives in local Croat and Serb media in the town of Vukovar, the centre of the region. While some progress was achieved in the media's commitment to peace journalism, we were still able to observe deeply entrenched long-lasting inter-communal mistrust, accusations and readiness of political elites to abuse delicate divisions. This discovery raises the important question of just how far does the successful and exemplary peacekeeping mission or administration goes in the context of developed local institutions, and to what extent previous patterns nevertheless remain in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dragon’s blood is amongst non timber forest products in which its of supply depends on its natural availability and the demand of the commodity. This study discusses institutional market, value chains and marketing efficiency of dargon’s blood. Primary and secondary data were collected by interview based on snowball sampling method. Data were analyzed descriptively and quantitatively. Institutional economics approach was used to determine institutional marketing of dragon’s blood. Results show that the relations and behavior of marketing agents of dragon’s blood will form an institutional marketing with patron-client system, because of unbalanced position in terms of economy, accessibility and information. There were four marketing channels that exist in the research area. All of these marketing channels of dragon’s blood can be categorized as efficient marketing in which an average value of marketing efficiency were 17.86%. Channel 3 is the most efficient marketing channel with the smallest efficiency value of 12.86% and high farmer share (62.86%): penjernang – dragon’s blood traders at the village level – urban merchants in the district level – wholesalers at the province level – exporter. This result indicates that the most efficient marketing channel was the channel where the collectors sell dragon’s blood in the form of resin.

This study aims to explore the role of local institutions in the establishment of preparedness habitus and the development of disaster mitigation in Mount Kelud area of Kediri Regency using the structural-constructivist approach of Pierre Bourdieu. This research is qualitative research in nature so that the data collection is conducted by participant observation, document tracking, and in-depth interview. The results showed that local institutions that play a role in the formation of disaster prepared habitus and mitigation development in the Mount Kelud area are formal institutions e.g. BPBD of Kediri, District and Village, and informal institutions namely the Jangkar Kelud Community and the Village Disaster Preparedness Team. The research also found that collaborative roles between leaders and local leaders have contributed greatly to the formation of disaster preparedness habitus for residents of Mount Kelud Slopes. This evident showed when residents of Mount Kelud were able to evacuate and rescue independently and could minimize casualties and adapt to the current situation when Mount Kelud erupted in 2014. In the formation of preparedness habitus and disaster mitigation leaders and local leaders use the knowledge and local wisdom as capital value to develop the attitude of life "Harmony with Mount Kelud", and the principle of life 'Sitik Edang ". For local residents, Mount Kelud is a part of their daily life that cannot be separated socio-culturally. The existence of the Suro Ox Myth and the Larung Sesaji Kelud cultural practice are some collective memories that can be used as cultural mitigation for the community in disaster management.

In Afghanistan, police reform is an important focus of international efforts. After over a decade of assistance, however, there are still daunting challenges of public trust and police effectiveness. From a civilian perspective, the role of the police is a crucial one—and very different from that of the military. Communities, being at the very heart of security challenges, are well positioned to understand the intricacies of security and development. A police service able to work closely with communities plays an important role in managing conflict in the long run. Recognizing this, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoIA) has steadily increased its efforts in community-oriented policing (COP), despite a deteriorating security situation since the withdrawal of US troops in 2014. This paper explores how COP in Afghanistan links with local communities and institutions to ensure both peoples’ security and trust. It begins by considering police-community relations through a broad lens of human security, which comprises the social, economic, political, cultural and legal aspects of their everyday lives. We then examine international assistance to police reform, how the Afghan police have developed their COP philosophy, and how this has played out in re-defining police-community relations. Using field data from Nimruz Province, we then look at the role of local institutions of chowkidari and shura in addressing people’s insecurities, and opportunities for linking these with COP efforts of the police. We conclude that there is a real potential for COP in Afghanistan that his locally owned and sustainable, if enough attention is given to inclusive processes and developing creative and flexible trust-building relationships with local institutions and organizations.

Oaxaca is the most biologically-and culturally-diverse state of Mexico, and considered by many to be a source of best practices for the role of Indigenous peoples in forest governance. Utilizing an original data set containing census and remote sensing information, I construct a set of empirical tests to assess the impact of indigenous peoples and decentralized local institutions on forest loss in Mexico. Recognizing the great biological and cultural diversity of Mexico, I employ an ecoregion sampling technique to understand trends in different vegetation regimes and to understand better how local institutions influenced forest loss between 2000-2015 by looking within shared watersheds crossing the Oaxacan border. The results indicate that, contrary to strategies based on targeting simply the presence of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous households weakly correlate with forest loss, while Oaxacan autonomous Indigenous municipalities, which retain meaningful influence on local institutions, consistently have lower forest loss across national, regional, and ecoregional samples.

This article discusses the peacemaking architecture within the scope of sociocultural processes in Southwest Nigeria. The study was carried out in Southwest Nigeria, focusing on a limited number of cases. Qualitative data were collected and analyzed using the content analysis method. It found that local institutions had a noticeable effect on the peacemaking processes on communal conflict; but they are, to a marked level, incapacitated owing to the lack of modern organizational powers to exert authority, poor access to detailed information about crises, and a conflict of interest. It therefore concludes that local institutional strength on peacemaking has not developed to the extent of overcoming inter-communal and inter-ethnic crises. Rather, its strengths and successes lie more in dealing with intra-communal and micro-conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on common pool resource governance have largely focused on men, who tend to have disproportionate rights and ownership with regards property and resources. This has resulted in the access and control rights of women being generally overlooked. Gender disaggregated analyses have revealed the important role of women in the governance of the commons. While certain commons may be relatively more important for women, there are variations in their level of resource access and management role, influenced by social structures and divisions. We examined the role of gender and how such intersectionality could shape the governance of the commons in the Spiti Valley in the Indian Trans-Himalaya. We found that gender, class, and caste intersected in the governance of irrigation water. Our study highlights the role of women in the governance of the commons and points to the nuanced and variable roles found within this gender group.

Participatory action research in communal grazing lands can inform end users on cost-effective methods for restoring land to improve local livelihoods and environmental quality in terms of reduced degradation and enhanced ecosystem services. A multi-stakeholder process involving producers, development practitioners, and researchers is demonstrated for conducting action research to restore degraded communal grazing lands in East Africa. Producer-managed trials provided actionable evidence on brief resting durations and reseeding in pastoral rangelands in Kenya, and on improved forages and weeding in grazing exclosures in the Ethiopian highlands. The usefulness of this evidence is demonstrated through quantitative data and stated or revealed preferences of livestock producers. Local land management institutions and government and civil society practitioners confirmed the utility of the results to land management practice and policy, while spontaneous local up-scaling of improved forages in exclosures affirmed their scalability. These results are attributable to elements of the action research process, including prioritization of practical producer needs, close involvement of local institutions able to take action, collaborative design of producer-managed trials, and generation of evidence applicable in scaling. Among the restoration options tested, those more successful in trials and preferred by producers tended to have moderate (or low) costs, complexity, time to returns, and risk, suggesting possible optimization of trade-offs among options, such as between the potential performance of an option and its risk. Robust options that balance consistency with effectiveness may be good candidates for scaling. In communal grazing lands facing varied constraints to restoration, using research methodology responsive to institutional stakeholders at and above local level is an effective strategy for deriving scalable restoration approaches for win-win gains in livelihoods and the environment.

Research Summary: In this article, we examine the effects of institutional entry barriers on incumbent firms' technological diffusion. In particular, we combine new institutional economics and nonmarket perspectives to build a theoretical framework about the impact of local entry barriers on community‐based firms and how they affect incumbent firms' technology diffusion. We theorize that the local institutional environment reduces technology diffusion because of reduced entry threat, but incumbents' capabilities and the intensity of competition from private firms may moderate this effect. We exploit the exogenous geographical variation of alternative entry regimes in the U.S. broadband industry to causally capture incumbents' technology adoption strategies. This article suggests that local institutional contexts that advantage private firms over nonprivate firms may generate divergent spatial technology diffusion processes within and across firms. Managerial Summary: In this article, we examine how firms adjust their technology adoption to their local institutional environment. We argue and empirically show that local institutions that restrict new entry by nonprivate firms reduce private incumbents' technology diffusion but the effect depends on firm and market characteristics. In particular, national incumbents are more resilient because of their capabilities while local competition by private firms moderates the negative effect of reduced entry threat. We use the context of the U.S. broadband industry to examine the effect of local institutions that provide advantages to some firms over others. Our results suggest that managers need to adjust their technology adoption strategies to the local regulatory environment taking into account firm's capabilities and market competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is causing wide-ranging effects on ecosystem services critical to coastal communities and livelihoods, creating an urgent need to adapt. Most studies of climate change adaptation consist of narrative descriptions of individual cases or global synthesis, making it difficult to formulate and test locally rooted but generalizable hypotheses about adaptation processes. In contrast, researchers in this study analyzed key points in climate change adaptation derived from coordinated fieldwork in seven coastal communities around the world, including Arctic, temperate, and tropical areas on four continents. Study communities faced multiple challenges from sea level rise and warmer ocean temperatures, including coastal erosion, increasing salinity, and ecological changes. We analyzed how the communities adapted to climate effects and other co-occurring forces for change, focusing on most important changes to local livelihoods and societies, and barriers to and enablers of adaptation. Although many factors contributed to adaptation, communities with strong self-organized local institutions appeared better able to adapt without substantial loss of well-being than communities where these institutions were weak or absent. Key features of these institutions included setting and enforcing rules locally and communication across scales. Self-governing local institutions have been associated with sustainable management of natural resources. In our study communities, analogous institutions played a similar role to moderate adverse effects from climate-driven environmental change. The findings suggest that policies to strengthen, recognize, and accommodate local institutions could improve adaptation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, the international community has focused on the globalization of human rights rather than the rights of local people. But given the limited impact of international law at domestic law in countries with different cultural and religious backgrounds, the emphasis nowadays is on the necessity of localization of human rights. The challenge between national and international laws has been controversial, which in fact challenges the implementation of international human rights law at domestic level. However human rights can be localized through redefining and reinterpreting existing global norms in line with the needs of individuals themselves at very local level, and further contribute to develop human rights, at international level. This also affects the function of international rights bodies, such as UNHCR, human rights Rapporteur, and so on. This research, by using a descriptive and analytical method, investigates how exactly the human rights abuses, at local level, should be considered global? And how are different forms of human rights abuses, at the national and local levels, affecting the universal norms of human rights? The study also explains why people's participation is necessary in the process of localizing human rights, especially when decisions are taken at very global levels that are far from accessible to the people affected by them. To do this, first, a different conceptual framework for the localization of human rights, which is accepted to the international community, is elucidated. By applying this approach, along with using the methods that show the human rights needs of local people, tries to adopt a "bottom-up" approach, and analyze the possibility of producing local human rights in the international context. The findings suggest that localizing human rights, and adopting the aforementioned approach, can provide an appropriate framework for a more effective interaction between international human rights law and the realization of human rights at the local level. It helps to redefine and reflect the needs of local people with different cultural, religious and social norms, and, on the other hand, can provide an appropriate opportunity for individuals at local level to claim their rights in accordance with international standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we conceptualize markets for underserved communities as being constituted by local institutions that reflect the modalities of these individual's lives. Using data on the activities that four social ventures across India, Bangladesh and Cambodia have undertaken to craft new markets for their clean energy solutions, we highlight how these actors incorporate their technologies within native material understandings, develop transaction systems consistent with resident consumption practices and entrench their organizations into the existing infrastructure. We term these processes indigenizing, microprovisioning and codeveloping, respectively. In meshing local context as part of their market crafting efforts, these ventures seed micro-entrepreneurship activity, generate employment for locals as well as improve standards of living within the community through the provision of productivity enhancing products and services. Our findings highlight the significance of engaging with local institutions as part of market crafting efforts in these scenarios. This paper offers insights that contribute to the sociology of markets, and poverty reduction via entrepreneurship literatures as well as have important practical and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]