ALI DOUAI, MCF en Sciences Economiques, GREDEG, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, ali.douai@unice.fr

et

MATTHIEU MONTALBAN, MCF en Sciences Economiques, GREThA, Université Montesquieu-Bordeaux 4

Institutions and the environment: the case for a historical political economy

Résumé : This paper aims at opening a discussion with the two leading authors of institutional ecological economics (IEE) – J. Paavola and A. Vatn – about the nature and patterns of governance of environmental conflicts. We first present both a sympathetic and critical examination of IEE, as developed by each of them. Our aim is to highlight the strength and weaknesses of their respective theory in explaining the emergence and the regulation of environmental conflicts. Some important limitations are related to their respective underlying approaches of institutional change which tend to downgrade the role of socio-historical factors (power relations, social positions of actors, contradictory interests and political compromises) on these two issues. This leads to some internal contradictions and some analytical shortcomings in each theory. We then propose some possibilities of improvements and research directions based on a political socio-economic approach (inspired by classical Marxism and Regulation theory) of environmental conflicts. Concepts of structural contradictions, of regulation of social relationships to nature and political compromises are developed to deal with the issues of the emergence and the regulation of environmental conflicts and to suggest ways to conceptualize the interrelations between environmental issues and existing socio-economic dynamics.

Contacts :  Bénédicte RULLEAU, MCF en Sciences Economiques benedicte.rulleau@uvsq.fr et Guillaume BAILLY, MCF en Géographie guillaume.bailly@uvsq.fr