Institutional innovation in european private forestry: the emergence of forest owners' organizations

The emergence and development of organizations of private forest owners in situations where they were not previously collectively organized is a relevant institutional innovation in forestry. This chapter looks at the factors that may have contributed to this institutional change in the following countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The conceptual framework used to present and discuss these country cases considers the following types of factors: (i) the structural changes in the social and economic environment of private forestry when forest owners' organizations emerged, and the needs for collective action of private forest owners triggered by those changes; (ii) the factors contributing to cope with the 'free riding' problems involved in collective action; (iii) the mechanisms leveraging the capacities of forest owners' associations beyond the initial domain where they emerged and contributing to give them the 'critical mass' needed for having substantial impact on forestry economic conditions; and (iv) the possible existence of 'path dependence' phenomena, where the conditions prevailing when forest owners' organizations emerged have a lasting influence throughout their lifetime. With different specifications according to the characteristics of each country, these four sets of factors appear to be useful as a common framework for organizing the explanation of how forest owners' associations emerged and developed in the countries considered here.