Hassenforder, Emeline
Description
One among other possible approaches towards integrated and adaptive Natural Resource
Management (NRM) is participatory planning. Participatory planning entails engaging relevant
stakeholders in the identification of environmental issues and the planning of actions to be
implemented in order to address these issues. It is now widely acknowledged that plans resulting from
participatory planning processes for NRM are more likely to be implemented and sustainable when
supported by adequate...[Show more] institutions. However, the extent to which participatory planning processes
are able to deliver expected outcomes, and to trigger institutional dynamics, is still largely unknown.
The main research question of this PhD is “How can participatory planning processes for NRM trigger
suitable institutional dynamics to more sustainably address social and environmental issues of
concern in a given context?“ This research question is addressed through two lenses: a methodological
lens, looking at the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of participatory planning processes for NRM,
and an institutional lens, looking at institutional dynamics and their drivers. Two participatory planning
processes were analysed, in the Rwenzori region in Uganda and the Fogera woreda (district) in
Ethiopia.
This thesis provides four main additions to knowledge. First, it bridges the theory-practice gap in the
M&E of participatory processes by proposing combined descriptive and analytical frameworks. M&E
frameworks used in practice are generally ready-to-use grids of criteria which are not adapted to the
specificity of the case, while frameworks proposed in the literature are often resource-demanding and
face the reluctance of practitioners. To my knowledge, no existing approaches have suggested
combining both an easy-to-use descriptive framework and an adaptive analytical framework in order
to bridge the theory-practice gap in the M&E of participatory processes. Second, this thesis draws
from a wide range of social and management sciences to support participation scholars to undertake
their “research journey” with more confidence. Most existing studies remain well within one or the
other corpus, preventing scholars seeking to draw from both social and management sciences to
understand and compare approaches. This thesis provides a typology which helps participation
scholars to clarify their underlying assumptions and to identify which research approaches they can
draw from to monitor and evaluate their participatory processes. Third, it provides an original
contribution to the emerging literature on “critical institutionalism” by exploring a practical
application of the institutional bricolage approach. In the past, institutional bricolage has mainly been
used for in-depth analysis of institutional changes but no studies investigated how it could be voluntarily triggered through an intervention such as a participatory process. Finally, this thesis uses
the process-tracing method to identify contextual and procedural drivers in institutional emergence
and change. To my knowledge, no previous concrete application of the process tracing method had
been made in the literature to identify concrete drivers of institutional dynamics.
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