Bulletin n. 0/2004
December 2004
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Birner Regina, Wittmer Heidi
    On the 'efficient boundaries of the state': the contribution of transaction-costs economics to the analysis of decentralization and devolution in natural resource management
    in Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy , Volume 22, Issue 5, October ,  2004 ,  pp. 667-685
    Decentralization and devolution - also referred to as 'rolling back the boundaries of the state' - are important policy trends in natural resource management. Drawing a parallel with the efficient-boundary problem in industrial organization, the authors show how transaction-costs economics can be applied to identify the efficient boundaries of the state in natural resource management. The following extensions of the transaction-cost framework are proposed: (1) introduction of care intensity and contest intensity as additional key attributes of transactions; (2) introduction of cooperative types of organization as a third governance structure besides market and hierarchies; and (3) introduction of natural resource characteristics, social capital, and state capability as contextual variables. The authors also discuss the possibilities for empirical application.
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