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Democratic societiesâ emphasis on individual rights and freedoms inevitably opens them up to political disputes. Conflict management should thus be seen as an integral part of democratic institutional design. The evolution and management of policy disputes concerning the use of different natural resources in Finland is analysed by using the theoretical models of frame analysis and strategic interaction. The studied disputes include lake fisheries, watercourse regulation, reindeer herding, and forestry. The institutional design in the case studies varies. Despite the differences, many common features are identified that could explain their successes or difficulties in achieving sustainable and cooperative use of the resources. Among these are problems involving complex and uncertain knowledge, differences in frames held by multiple users of a resource, and distrust between the users and other parties. The analysis concludes with preliminary conclusions on how various disputes related to sustainable resource use could be managed. These include addressing the knowledge and frame problems in order to initiate a learning process; establishing sub-processes in which mutual trust between the parties â including a managing authority or a third party â can emerge; giving explicit roles and a clear division of entitlement to the parties; and providing a credible alternative for co-operation that affects the partiesâ payoff assessments during the process. Finally, the conflict management process shouldnât be regarded as a distinct phase of dispute resolution, but as an essential aspect of ongoing co-management practices of resource use.

The recognition of Indigenous Peoples' rights has sailed up as one of the most critical issues in land use planning, globally. In this paper, we use a recent planning process for a national park on traditional Sámi territory in northern Sweden to demonstrate how state officials engaged in everyday conservation planning are pivotal in navigating colonial legislation and promoting policy change on Indigenous rights. The analysis contributes, among other, to scholarly debates about the role of conflict in land use planning and the practices of frontline bureaucrats in natural resource governance. Our contribution demonstrates the value of an agonistic lens that attends to the constructive role of conflict in democratic change in pluralistic societies. This concerns both how state officials approach disagreement as well as the way contestation can create novel spaces to promote structural changes towards sustainability and justice. By not assuming collaboration but respectfully seeking it, the state officials succeeded in re-designing a collapsed process to help actors explore larger structural issues around Indigenous rights and government policy. In our agonistic reading, then, contestation should be perceived not as oppositional to the establishment of collaboration but as a necessary, and productive, part of inclusive land use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Janne Hukkinen, Hannu Heikkinen, Kaisa Raitio, Ludger Muller-Wille We will (1) show that reindeer herders in Finland have a long tradition of entrepreneurship; (2) identify administrative and policy obstacles to fulfilling the entrepreneurial capacities and (3) recommend actions to remove the obstacles to indigenous entrepreneurship among herders. Successful herders in Finland have embraced key entrepreneurial virtues: positioning themselves honestly with respect to their challenges, sparing resources and thinking strategically about the future. Unfortunately, government policy and administration in Finland do not facilitate the full utilisation of the virtues. However, policies and administrative structures can be reformed with carefully designed participatory approaches that rely on the expertise of herders, government officials and researchers of reindeer management. Our data comes from interviews, field visits and workshops organised during a three-year EU project on sustainable Reindeer Management (RENMAN). In addition, we have collected success stories of self-employment and entrepreneurship from four decades of fieldwork among herders in Finland.