Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5.1 State types and the management of conflicts, voids and cooperation.
Political will and
resource
management
Dealing with
conflict, void and
cooperation
Attention for role
of local actors in
governance
Politic power and
resource use
Democratic
Resources use
for at least short
term public
interest
Broader agenda
setting
process - but
short term/own
interest may
prevail
Certain degrees
of accountability
Violent conflicts
disliked
Large degree of
attention for local
arena, actors are
given the chance to
cooperate with the
political domain
Exclusive
states
Certain groups
systematically
excluded/
marginalized
from use
Hidden agendas
overrules natural
resources
management
Discrimination
and
disempowerment
embedded
Large differences in
influence of local
actors
Autocratic
Access to
resources
monopolized
Small span of
control?
'Difficult' natural
resource
management
left unaddressed
irrespective of
their importance
Formal
institutions are
isolated from
power or
used by it
Conflict may be
fomented
State monopoly
on violence
Local actors are
means to express
central power
Fragile
No state
monopoly on
important
resources
No span of
control
Political attention
diverted away
from resource
management
Little recourse
to formal
institutions
Catch as catch
can situations
No state
monopoly on
violence
Often large
influence and
power for local
actors and
complicated
relations between
local actors and
central power
implementation of quantitative tools like statistical data analysis. In doing so, the the-
oretical framework further develops itself. Patterns of cooperation and conflict may
emerge for particular cases. Another extreme may be the absence of patterns or pure
randomness. Our assumption, however, is that clear patterns will manifest themselves
as self-similar patterns in system dynamics, visible at different scales, that evolve over-
time into new patterns. Changes appear both as a result of gradually evolving processes
and as the product of rapid processes occurring at the tipping points of systems or when
the system crosses boundaries (Meerts 2011).
We have asked ourselves if mainstream social theories, views of societal changes
and views of physical changes can be combined in any way. A very important concept
that connects physical and societal change views - and also confuses many debates - is
entropy. In classical physics, entropy is the amount of energy that is not available for
work anymore like the rest heat of a motor dissipated over the environment. Due to
 
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