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To Each According to Need? The Allocative Power of Local Officials in the Distribution of Forest Land Use Rights to Households in Vietnam
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To Each According to Need? An Examination of the Allocative Power of Local Officials in
the Distribution of Forest Land Use Rights to Households in Vietnam
by
Cari An Coe
Ph.D., UCLA
Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association
Boston, Massachusetts
August 28-31, 2008
Abstract
Vietnam’s forest policy has attempted to engender “community-based” natural resource management by creating private economic incentives for households to sustainably use and protect forest land by allocating them private forest land use rights. The goal of such policies has been to ease the socio-economic marginalization of poor, ethnic minority communities living in remote, mountainous areas while conserving forest resources. Local governments are in charge of allocating these use rights to households. Many scholars argue that, under such circumstances, and without democratic institutions or central oversight to constrain local officials in their allocative power, we should expect forest land use rights to be distributed to households in such a way as to exacerbate existing power distributions in the community, further marginalizing those the policy intended to empower. Thus, the expectation is that, under such circumstances, local officials are not accountable to marginalized groups in their communities. This paper tests this theory by examining how local officials on the edge of Vietnam’s Tam Dao national park allocated forest land use rights to households of different socio-economic and political standing. I argue that, despite a lack of democratic institutions at the local level and little oversight from above, local officials in Vietnam are constrained in their allocative power by the existence of long-standing, community-recognized household property rights over forest land and by community expectations that justice-based claims to land will be fulfilled. This paper thus reexamines the categories of “accountable” and “non-accountable” as they relate to local officials’ responses to socio-economic inequality in their distribution of forest land use rights in Vietnam. In addition, it challenges categories of “powerful” and “powerless” as they have typically characterized community members of various statuses and their ability to affect policy implementation in non-democratic settings.
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To Each According to Need? An Examination of the Allocative Power of Local Officials in
the Distribution of Forest Land Use Rights to Households in Vietnam
by
Cari An Coe
Ph.D., UCLA
Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association
Boston, Massachusetts
August 28-31, 2008
Abstract
Vietnam’s forest policy has attempted to engender “community-based” natural resource
management by creating private economic incentives for households to sustainably use and
protect forest land by allocating them private forest land use rights. The goal of such policies has
been to ease the socio-economic marginalization of poor, ethnic minority communities living in
remote, mountainous areas while conserving forest resources. Local governments are in charge
of allocating these use rights to households. Many scholars argue that, under such
circumstances, and without democratic institutions or central oversight to constrain local officials
in their allocative power, we should expect forest land use rights to be distributed to households
in such a way as to exacerbate existing power distributions in the community, further
marginalizing those the policy intended to empower. Thus, the expectation is that, under such
circumstances, local officials are not accountable to marginalized groups in their communities.
This paper tests this theory by examining how local officials on the edge of Vietnam’s Tam Dao
national park allocated forest land use rights to households of different socio-economic and
political standing. I argue that, despite a lack of democratic institutions at the local level and
little oversight from above, local officials in Vietnam are constrained in their allocative power by
the existence of long-standing, community-recognized household property rights over forest land
and by community expectations that justice-based claims to land will be fulfilled. This paper
thus reexamines the categories of “accountable” and “non-accountable” as they relate to local
officials’ responses to socio-economic inequality in their distribution of forest land use rights in
Vietnam. In addition, it challenges categories of “powerful” and “powerless” as they have
typically characterized community members of various statuses and their ability to affect policy
implementation in non-democratic settings.
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