Transnational Actors and the Power of Weak Laws: Decentralizing Watershed Management Without the State

Do weak laws - rules that are officially codified but unimplemented by political elites - have the power to change behavior? Can they enhance the governing authority of non-state actors vis-a-vis the state? This paper contributes to the debate over these questions by analyzing the power of weak decentralization laws in Ecuador. An interesting contradiction makes decentralization a useful lens for analyzing weak laws. The bulk of decentralization research takes formal state law at face value; explanations focus on the incentives leading national political elites to adopt decentralization laws, which define the process by which local governments gain additional authority. However, there is increasing evidence that decentralization often occurs without elite support through processes outside those prescribed by national laws. This de facto decentralization is worthy of explanation because of its prevalence and because its outcomes are similar to those of de jure decentralization. But current theories cannot explain decentralization that occurs outside the formal legal process. This paper fills this gap by providing a theory of de facto decentralization of watershed management. It explains how even where elite opposition and internal turmoil obstruct implementation, weak decentralization laws can empower transnational and local actors to implement de facto decentralization through a process that largely by-passes national elites. To control for state weakness and isolate the impact of other factors I conduct a subnational comparison, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, of de facto watershed management decentralization within Ecuador, a state plagued by chronic political instability and economic crisis. During the late 1990s the Ecuadorian government passed a series of laws to decentralize responsibilities in several areas, including environmental management. This process soon stalled amid opposition by national elites and was replaced by a tendency towards recentralization. Nevertheless, these weak, ambiguous decentralization laws provided the permissive conditions for transnational actors advocating decentralized, Integrated Watershed Management systems. Transnational advocates strategically interpreted these laws to persuade local politicians to seize authority for managing natural resources. Through strategic framing and network construction they facilitated a process by which local actors gained the power to make autonomous decisions, raise revenue, and control expenditures related to natural resource management. In municipalities where these transnational advocates were absent, de facto decentralization of watershed management was far less likely. In addition to demonstrating the power of weak decentralization laws, the paper makes two contributions to the decentralization literature. First, it explains how decentralization can occur without the support of national political elites through informal processes. In so doing, it suggests the need to broaden definitions of decentralization to constitute all processes by which subnational governments gain the autonomy to make final decisions on important policy issues, raise funds, and control expenditures. Second, I argue that transnational actors should be brought back in to the study of decentralization, but with a new focus on the interaction between transnational and local actors during the implementation phase.