Whose forest? A two-level collective action perspective on struggles to reach polycentric governance

Natural resources management often entails accommodating competing cross-scale interests. Polycentricity literature offers a potential solution: value heterogeneity can reflect in an institutional architecture that allows the coexistence of multiple management priorities, appeasing conflicts. However, this literature has largely endorsed a static perspective focusing less on the function conflicts can play ex ante for reaching such a more participated governance. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on the micro-processes of conflict that precede the potential instalment of polycentric governance. We present a two-level collective action framework that emphasizes key moments of such processes and use it to read forest-related conflicts. In a comparative analysis of four illustrative case studies from Finland, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia, we focus on common dynamics of conflict reification and its eventual transformation into an agreement on common procedural rules, which can sustain polycentric governance. We work iteratively to enrich our two-level collective action framework with insights from other corollary theories, notably the Social Movements, Bargaining, and Deliberative theories. We find that conflict serves the purpose of marginalized parties to reshuffle power imbalances and force stronger parties to the negotiation table, corroborating other literature. Yet, conflict must be followed by negotiations and integrative bargaining on procedural rules for institutional innovation, that can lead to the accommodation of value heterogeneity. Our study can help practitioners in contextualizing current conflict scenarios within a longer-term perspective and evaluating ongoing conflict episodes and the costs associated to certain strategies versus the prospect of longer-term consequences of these struggles. •Conflicts over forests can be read as two-level collective action problems.•Comparative evidence on conflict dynamics before polycentricity.•Conflict escalation followed by negotiation can accommodate value heterogeneity.•Social Movements, Bargaining and Deliberative Theories can enrich Polycentricity.•Key actor strategies to kick-off institutional innovation are identified.