Decentralization, Local Institutions, and Environmental Change: A Cross-Sectional Time-Series Study of Forest Governance in Latin America

世界各地的政府都在转向权力下放政策--将治理责任从中央转移到较低级别的政府--以提高他们作为环境管理者的绩效。然而，很少有严谨的研究考察这些政策的政治和环境后果。我们设计了一项研究，利用大样本量、长期数据以及因果关系的可比衡量标准，比较玻利维亚、危地马拉和秘鲁等国之间以及各国内部分散森林治理的努力。 为了精确评估权力下放政策的环境后果，我们采用了来自遥感的森林时间序列图像的措施。本研究的总体目的是为关注森林治理相关公共政策的学生、学者和政策制定者提供重要而有力的研究结果。知识价值：本研究将为理解分散的公共政策提供新的理论和经验基础。我们的问题具有理论意义，因为它们涉及公共政策如何通过地方一级人类机构的干预影响社会结果。 这项研究将同时检验一系列与分散的环境政策的环境影响有关的体制假设和其他解释。由于比较研究的设计、关于所有三个国家的地方机构和森林状况的可比数据以及严格的分析方法，该项目将有助于对权力下放的影响和地方政治的作用提出有力的结论。更广泛的影响：这项研究具有直接的实用价值，因为世界各地的捐助者和政府都在努力制定有效管理其自然资源的政策。它将帮助决策者和政策分析人员更好地了解有利于有效分散资源治理的因素，并将提供一套创新方法来监测和评价公共政策和治理行动的环境影响。 我们将与三国政府和学术机构的同事建立现有的关系，并将继续与他们分享我们的政策相关调查结果作为优先事项。然而，这项研究的影响不仅限于自然资源的治理。森林为我们的项目提供了一种衡量政策成果的准确方法，但这项研究的结果也将为关注其他商品和服务（如公共教育和卫生计划）的治理机构的学者提供信息。

Governments all over the world are turning to decentralization policies-the transfer of governance responsibilities from central to lower levels of government-to improve their performance as environmental managers. Yet few rigorous studies have examined the political and environmental consequences of these policies. Working with a large sample size, over-time data, and comparable measures of cause and consequence, we have designed a study to compare efforts of decentralized forest governance across as well as within the countries of Bolivia, Guatemala, and Peru. To assess with precision the environmental outcomes of decentralization policies, we employ measures derived from remotely sensed, time-series images of forests. The overall purpose of this research is to provide important and robust findings to students, scholars, and policymakers concerned with public policies related to forest governance.Intellectual Merit: This study will provide new theoretical and empirical bases for understanding decentralized public policy. Our questions are of theoretical significance as they address how public policies affect societal outcomes through the intervention of human institutions at the local level. The study will simultaneously test a series of institutional hypotheses and alternative explanations related to the environmental effects of decentralized environmental policy. Because of the comparative research design, comparable data on local institutions and forest conditions across all three countries, as well as rigorous analytical methods, the project will contribute with robust findings on the effects of decentralization and the role of local politics. Broader Impact: This research is of immediate practical value as donors and governments around the world struggle to create policies that effectively govern their natural resources. It will help policymakers and policy analysts to gain a better understanding of the factors that are conducive to effective decentralized resource governance, and it will provide an innovative set of methods to monitor and evaluate the environmental impact of public policies and governance actions. We will cultivate our existing relationships with our colleagues at the governmental and academic organizations in each of the three countries and we will make it a priority to continue to share our policy-relevant findings with them. The impact of this study, however, is not limited to the governance of natural resources. Forests offer our project an accurate way to measure policy outcomes, but findings from this study will also inform scholars concerned with the governance institutions for other goods and services, such as public education and health programs.