Institutional dynamics: Resilience, vulnerability and adaptation in environmental and resource regimes

Like all social institutions, governance systems that address human-environment relations - commonly know as environmental or resource regimes - are dynamic. Although analysts have examined institutional change from a variety of perspectives, a particularly puzzling feature of institutional dynamics arises from the fact that some regimes linger on relatively unchanged even after they have become ineffective, while others experience state changes or even collapse in the wake of seemingly modest trigger events. This article employs the framework developed to study resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation in socio-ecological systems (the SES framework) in an effort to illuminate the conditions leading to state changes in environmental and resource regimes. Following a discussion of several conceptual issues, it examines institutional stresses, stress management mechanisms, and the changes that occur when interactive and cumulative stresses overwhelm these mechanisms. An important conclusion concerns the desirability of thinking systematically about institutional reform in a timely manner, in order to be prepared for brief windows of opportunity to make planned changes in environmental regimes when state changes occur. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.