Bureaucratic politics in protected areas: The voided power projection efforts of conservation vis-à-vis forest bureaucracies in Patagonia, Argentina

The Protected Areas in Latin America, beyond the preservation of nature, have been central for government control over spatial resources. The weaknesses of the domestic bureaucracies in this region results in a gap between their formal rules and the expected outcomes. Forest management is an issue of competition between production and environmental bureaucracies all over the world. Bureaucracies search for new fields of responsibility, increased budgets and resources for assuring their positions, expanding their territory. The administrative bodies that regulate forests and protected areas can direct the behaviour of subordinate agencies as a power projection strategy to provide formal jurisdiction over forest reserve instruments. Hence, the aim of this study is to analyse the different strategies used by domestic bureaucracies to increase their power in light of a new forest law in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina. Data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with key actors and document analysis using process tracing and actor centred power methodologies. Our results show that, after the approval of the national forest law, the provincial environment administration increased rank and expanded into forest territories. The consolidated presence of a new outpost office gained power and resulted in a rivalry with its counterparts. However, the ongoing changes in the institution’ structure and the production bureaucracy's long-term presence affected the environmental bureaucracy's consolidation leading it to an instability. Moreover, our results strengthened the tourism and real market informal interests behind the weakness of the formal objectives of the environmental bureaucracy’ hypothesis. •The outpost presence of a bureaucracy is a power strategy to increase its territoriality.•The long-term presence of other actors can disempower newly created outpost bureaucracies.•Economic interests promote the disempowerment of environmental bureaucracies.•Institutional weakness concepts only consider the formal goals of bureaucracies.•Based on informal goals, institutional weakness might rather be a case of non-regimes.