State Capacity and Inclusive Development

The states shapes development is a growing area of research in the development literature that takes place in different areas of investigation and within different political and ideological orientations in which the state institutions and their decisions have major implications for better wellbeing and rights distribution. The researchers are highly concerned with the identification of the types of states, and the institutional configurations as a result of them, they promote for the inclusive development and its expected outcomes. Basically, inclusive development is concerned with the expansion of human capabilities. It is related with the equal distribution of the social and material benefits among social groups and sectors (Hau, 2012).

The states could affect the inclusive development in major two ways. The first way is the growth, as the state is the main responsible for the institutional foundations for economic exchange and capital accumulation. It is considered as the major economic player as its natural right. Also, it has the right of making any required transformation in its role and to manage resistance against market exchange. Accordingly, the inclusive development is larger than the growth and the economic transformation, as it involves the equal redistribution (Leftwich 2008).

The second way is the social provision, as the states establishes welfare regimes in order to enhance the economic growth and to protect citizens against the risks associated with capitalist transformation. That is why states tend to establish social safety nets and maintains basic provision. It aims to maintain equality, poverty reduction and the management of class relations (Leftwich 2008).

The two major concepts the literatures are the spatial projects and territorial reach. States, with different types of their organizationally competence level among their agencies and the way their officials are embedded, often vary in their strategies of directed towards achieving development across the state territory. The territorial reach is treated by the literature as a separate dimension of state capacity.  States which are being characterized by organisational effectiveness and embedded autonomy could lack the required capabilities to promote inclusive development as a result of their inability to reach territorially delimitated areas. The variation in territorial reach is the direct responsibility of the domestic politics (Hau, 2012).

The literature focuses on the geography, capitalist transformation and international war as the major controller of state capacity. This analysis involves the elite coalitions and state legitimacy as two major determinants of state capacity.

• Ruling coalitions: The balance of power among social forces, and the political organisation are the main source of the differences in the ability of states to sustain economic growth, provide basic social services and redistribute resources. The issue of good governance illustrates that building the state institutions mainly operate in order to manage conflict among powerful social actors or the dominant coalitions. The relationships among the elites embedded in the state structure and their performance. According to this analysis the similar state institutions might have very different capacities, which is directly related to their level of power and control of the public decisions (Hau, 2012).
• International and domestic conflicts: War is considered as the major motivation of the elites to form alliances with state leaders and assist in the construction of high capacity states. A specific level of institutional capacity is needed for avoiding external threats to induce state building. War caused the economic elite to pay taxes and accept many other controls on their activities. Also, it resulted in building an administrative and extractive machinery capable of resources mobility to increase the state capacity for the deployment of armies (Hau, 2012).

The international state system and the global political economy have witnessed several changes since the 1980s. These challenges caused major implications for embodying, organizing, and territorial reach of states. There are three critical factors that have potential impact on the contemporary processes of state formation, including, the neoliberal globalization, democratization and power shifts in the international state system, which is mainly represented in the rise and rapid growth of the BRICs’ and other emerging powers in different global countries. The recent research concerning state capacity indicates that the argument that globalization could erode state capacity and weaken states, resulted in a consensus that globalization has a transformative impact on the state institutions and their practices. Accordingly, the way and the reason behind the state changes and transformation is still a matter of debate (Hau, 2012).

Political and Ideological Determinants of State Capacity

There are states that leaves the villagers to their own devices, as they could maintain a sustainable forestry, as villagers are the best to understand the market for their timber. But other states ensures that they have to maintain a preserved section of the original forest, especially, which looks like a tree farm. According to Hvistendahl (2012), Knowledge about sustainable forestry is available from different practices. It is important to reach these information to people.

Governance is the decision-making process we follow, the models, principles and information used to make decisions and determine who gets to decide. Environmental governance includes formal and informal authorities, interactions, social groups, processes and traditions. These factors are likely to influence power and public decisions and citizens’ engagement or disaffection. The environmental scale could take the form of the physical geography, concerned with the spatial range, and the human geography, which describes the social organization and the interactions between organizational levels and the environment.

Societal and ecological processes interact together to formulate to frame environmental problems and resolutions (Reed & Bruyneel, 2010). This is a dynamic scale that describes relations between human factor and the environment. Four scale types could take place as follows:

• Scale up: includes multi-level governance, which could be internationally operated.
• Scale down: incorporates local actors, regional/provincial and local authorities
• Scale out: expands to include new social actors and jurisdictional borders
• Scale back: meant to attain historical and contextual understanding

The neo-liberalization of governance suggests that the state remains a significant actor.

As environmental problems cross borders create risks across nations and stakeholder groups in a form of global environmental governance. These risks should be managed and consider the environmental problems and the proposed solutions (Reed & Bruyneel, 2010).

Global environmental governance experts call for new international institutions for global environmental governance as well as changes in the international agencies that operate in fields related to development, agriculture and trade regulations. Negotiations and agreements between states are the basis of the internationalization of environmental governance and environmental non-governmental organisation (NGOs) are also involved. They cooperate to propose set of rules of conduct that define, assign roles and guide Interaction (Baker, 2013).

China forest

The forest surrounding Pingzhang district, was managed collectively. Which means that state-owned timber companies and their related offices local offices controlled the forests for decades. Then the ownership was converted to individual tenure, which allowed the farmers to operate them for 70 years. China implemented many reforms in comparison to other countries. Since 1970s, it has succeeded in adding 40 million hectares as a result of fast plantation (Science Magazines, 2012)

The 70% decline in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon shows an evidence of the possibility of managing the advance of a vast agricultural frontier. The laws imposed by the government assisted in the interventions in soy and beef supply chains expansion which yielded in a decline in the demand for new deforestation. Corporate risk management have been effective and could achieve progress in the decline of the deforestation while offering a framework to address other important factors of sustainable development. The prospect of ending Amazon deforestation is still effective while agricultural production continues to increase. Accordingly, Brazil deforestation has improved, as the clear-cutting of mature forest decreased with 70%

The Challenges and Transformations of the Twenty-first Century

In Senegal supply chain of the production, transport and distribution of the charcoal has good presence in the market. The charcoal chain involves a series of interrelated exchanges through which products, money and information flow. The Senegal’s forest products are processed through the supply chain ushered from the land, through fabrication, till they reach the final users. The supply chain analysis is useful in analyzing the continuous operations. It is used to understand how countries benefit from natural resources (Ribot, 1998).

Refexive governance offers the best way to deal with adopting sustainable development as a main target. Governments are increasingly devoting time, efforts and resources to solve problems that result of governing. Refexive governance is an approach that assumes that governing activities are managed in wider societal feedback loops (Baker, 2013).

The social-ecological systems analysis assumes that governance is an institutional interface operating between ecological and human systems. It is efficient in analyzing the dynamics of the relationship between times of change and the required capacity to adapt with the social-ecological systems (Baker, 2013).

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The networks can usefully describe the ecological systems that can show the composition of and interactions between multiple items. Networks could also introduce heterogeneity to the classic theories of populations, diseases, and societies. Also, networks enable generalities among different systems through finding similarities among processes of formation. This approach could be used to understand how changes in the environment affect ecosystem dynamics through the analyses of interactions (Ostrom, 2009).

Adaptive co-management offers a solution to the dilemma of the lack of trust in collaboration, troubles concerning institutional development, and social learning. The adaptive co-management method focuses on the importance of the experiential and experimental learning and vertical and horizontal collaboration necessary to improve and respond to the complex social–ecological systems. The centralized bureaucracies can’t effectively respond to rapid social–ecological transformations and operate under uncertainty conditions. The new governance approaches emphasize group decision making that provide various views, shared learning, and adaptability of social sources of renewal, and transformation. The uncertainty associated with the ecological and social governance are acknowledged as inherent to governance, and is related with collaborative processes and recognition that various knowledge sources and types of are relevant to problem solving (Fitzpatrick, 2011).

In adaptive co-management, self-organization is related to the emergence of formal and informal networks, working collaboratively and creatively, that often yield knowledge sources and ideas that links information and creates shared understanding, and problem articulation (Fitzpatrick, 2011).

The Application of Policy Instruments in the Case of Deforestation

Adaptive co-management stats with learning to avoid the problems of conventional command-and-control paradigm. Then, it performs deep analysis and greater specificity with respect to the learning objectives and risks (Fitzpatrick, 2011).

Green theorists accused to be the source of environmental degradation, and social domination. The green political thought is currently revising this issue in order to recognize the importance of the government for taking effective action with regard to environmental challenges. They consider the core activities of government to focused on environmental protection in an equal position to the economy and administering welfare policies (Armitage, et al., 2009)

The political ecology declares the practices and processes through which power is negotiated and wielded, and the importance of ecologies in relation to them. Accordingly, the political system is the main drivee of the ecologies. Also, no political projects is understood without analyzing their ecologies. The political ecologists takes a normative stance, as they produce the idea of the existence of  better ways of living together that are also damaging. Political ecology aims to maintain more equitable relations between humans and non-humans.

The political ecology requires the existence of apolitical one. These apolitical approaches are related to the “ecoscarcity” and “modernization” accounts.

Political economy analysis is used as a powerful tool to improve the effectiveness of aid.

It focuses on how political power and resources are distributed in different situations, and the results for development outcomes. It goes beyond the formal structures to show the underlying interests, and institutions that act as enablers for change. It is not a magic bullet for solving development problems, but it can support more effective and political development strategies, as provides realistic expectations of what could be achieved, and the risks. It highlights the main opportunities and barriers for policy reform that could be used by donors to manage their programming tools to promote for change. There are many political economy tools that could be used by development agencies for different analytical and operational purposes. DFID programme managers can use these tools as well as the HMG departments (DFID , 2009).

Key messages include:

• Political economy analysis is effective in creating country level plans and sector programmes, and could be used to avoid risk mitigation.
• Political economy analysis can help to enhance the effectiveness by identifying certain issues the donors should focus on.
• There is an increasing number of operationally relevant tools that could be used to formulate development strategies at the country level or the sector level.
• Many DFID country offices have used political economy analysis to enhance the quality of aid.
• Analysis should be conducted regularly with main partners in HMG.

The political economy analysis has been considered by the development agencies to assist them in formulating their aid strategies and programs. There is no agreed upon conceptual framework for political economy analysis. The environmental damages, whether in the UK or Mexico, the United States or India, have real impacts on people’s daily lives. The political economy approaches focus on the problem of production and how people live, and sustained. To maintain an economy, natural resources, like air, water, and raw materials and people as the most important resource (Robbins et al., 2010). The OECD-DAC definition highlights the main elements as follows:

• The political economy analysis is mainly concerned with the political and economic interaction, the way the power and wealth are distributed among different groups and the processes to maintain the relationship overtime. Politics, is understood as a means of contestation between interest groups who claim over rights and resources (DFID , 2009).
• Also, it is concerned with the economic processes that generate wealth, and that influence the way political decisions are made. These processes are inter-related and they could effectively influence development outcomes. The drivers of the political behavior are fully understood through this analysis, it shows the winners and losers and the implications for development strategies (DFID , 2009).

Governance

It is concerned with understanding:

• The incentives and interests that influence different groups within the society, and how these groups generate certain political outcomes that may affect development.
• The role that formal institutions play in formulating the human interaction from one side and political and economic competition.
• The impact of social values and ideas, including political directions, religion and
• Beliefs, that affect political behavior.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between three different levels of political economy analysis. These three levels are not alternatives to each other, they are considered to be applied within different contexts. The sector-level and problem-driven level are supposed to take place when the macro analysis is completed and they could be built upon (DFID , 2009).

Property rights are used to control certain activities related to the environment such as gathering firewood from a forest, getting drinking water from a stream, felling trees and preventing human entry to a protected area. They are used to govern the usage of the resources and specify claims of different actors to use the resources.

There is the right to use or access the resource, withdraw and exploit for economic benefit. Also, there is the right of control, including the management right, exclusion and alienation in terms of the right to rent or operate the resource. Variable resources require flexible property rights to develop them. For example, water rights are particularly changing according to the season. Other resources depend on the weather or social conditions. Property rights are complex, require changes over time and legislative reform is not enough alone to manage them in practice. It is important to study the nature of the claims by individuals and groups to lower the complexity of the property rights (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2004).

Privatization of common resources is a solution which is consistent with the analysis of many researchers in economics. The resource degradation is inevitable unless common property is switched to private property imposed by the official authorities. The communities that depend on common property resources could adopt various institutional arrangements to manage the common resources. These exist resources for which exclusion or controlled access of the probable users is considered problematic. Another type is the taxonomy of property rights needed. The common-property resources are implemented for certain property rights regimes, including the open access which do not require any kind of property rights and the private property in which an individual ownership has the exclusively of accessing the resource and in this case access is controlled with the property rights (Berkes et al., 1989).

Common pool resources is considered a non-cooperative behavior. Over the period between 1954 and 1968, researchers developed many models of tragedy, including, H. Scott Gordon and Anthony.  Scott argued that fisheries open access conditions is likely to lead to economic destruction of fish stocks. The problem is that individual fishers do not pay any attention to the costs the other fishers will have to pay as a result of harvesting from the same pool (Durant et al., 2004).

The attributes of common-pool resources according to Durant et al. (2004), are:

1. Feasible improvement of the resource conditions are useful to organize
2. Reliable indicators of the condition of the resource are available at a low cost
3. Predictability, as the flow of resource units is predictable.
4. The resource system is small, in terms of transportation and communication technology

Vietnam has changed the ownership system from collectivization to individual land ownership. Moving by this to a decentralized, market-oriented system. An important driver to this change stem from its desire to apply the property rights for agricultural land and forest areas management (Marschke, 2012).

Fisheries policy in Europe is still highly suffering from the interventionist command-and-control approaches which resulted in overfishing and reduced the fishing stocks, and created overcapitalization of fishing fleets the sea (Mengden, 2017)

The main problem of the fishery policy is that fishing stocks are common pool resources. This problem is a phenomenon that is known as the tragedy of the commons in economics. In the open seas, fish stocks are limited in quantity and at the same time they are accessible to many fishermen. Fishermen can fish as much as they can to get the largest share and stock (Mengden, 2017).