Historical Analysis of Institutional Regimes in Switzerland ... - IDHEAP

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1. Existing property rights are hardly ever basically questioned when a regime is changed but
redefined on an incremental and resource-specific basis through changes in the policy design
(e.g. through a change in perimeter or simple property restrictions).
2. If the intervening protection or use policy is too weak and incapable of producing enough
social commodities, the change in regime directly affects the regulative system (e.g. Holland:
purchase of forests; Greina: compensation for loss of water use).
3. The more differentiated and coherent a resource regime is, the more sustainable the use of
the resource will be, given heterogeneous demand.
To summarise this heuristics, research on the historical IR change aims to examine when,
whether, under what conditions and in what form IRs are established which can regulate all of the
use demands and thus react to the growing scarcity of individual goods and services or the
destruction of entire stocks of a given resource.
As we previously defined the different types of IR, it is now also possible to identify ideal-typical
historical development trajectories. Figure 2 provides an overview of such ideal-typical development
paths.
Figure 2: Development Trajectories of Institutional Resource Regimes
Degree of
differentiation
of the resourcespecific
policy design
complex IR
simple IR
complex IR
integrated IR
No IR
simple IR
complex IR
Degree of differentiation of the regulative system
Policy-driven trajectory: This type of development trajectory means that public policies are
conceived and implemented in the absence of explicit and clear property rights and their legal
definition. It should, however, be noted that the various policy designs can define very well
determined use rights (i.e. to a few goods and services provided by the resource), even if only
indirectly. However, actual property rights are only clearly formulated and officially/legally distributed
among the target groups of the relevant public policies at a later stage.
Parallel trajectory: In this case, there is parallel development of property and use rights and policy
design. This means that certain property and use rights are formally defined and distributed while
simultaneously setting clear limits with respect to the contents of these rights through different policy
designs. The opposite situation is also plausible: if different policy designs are introduced, this
provides an opportunity to clearly define and distribute the formal property and use rights which are
touched on by the public policies. Hence, it is not necessary to know whether the property and use
rights or the policy design are the driving force. It is important, however, that both elements are coordinated
in terms of both form and content (like identical or Siamese twins).