How does decentralization of pasture management affect the local communities? Evolution and perspectives from Southeast Albania

This paper examines how mountain communities in the Albanian post-communist period are affected by the recent decentralization process of the management of common pastures. Currently, common pastures represent 58% of the total Albanian pastures. Therefore, the issues around their management are very important for the mountain communities and the policy makers because they are the main resource for the development of the livestock activity and consequently, for the livelihood of the mountainous communities. Theory on the commons highlights the design principles for a good governance of the commons (Ostrom, 1990). More particularly, the governance needs a legal and institutional framework that allows avoiding the “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin, 1968). As a consequence, local communities need to build proper resource governance, which allows them responding well to changing conditions and establishing a resilience-based management of their common resource (Bestelmeyer & Briske, 2012). Pasture management in Albania has faced several changes in administrative modalities related to the assignment of rights and duties, which have affected pasture governance mechanisms at all territorial levels: national, regional, municipalities, and villages. As a transition privilege, the priority for attributing the use rights is given to the old authorized beneficiaries. In cases where they are not financially able, the use rights can be given outside the group of previous authorized beneficiaries. The main hypothesis discussed in this paper is that the institutional changes affecting the access and the use of the common pastures may weaken or strengthen the local communities according to their capacities to adapt their collective governance modalities. This paper examines how the farmers, at a very local level, react to the recent institutional change in the resource use of their communal pastures. The analysis is based on social surveys applying the Likert method to measure the perception of farmers affected by the legal and institutional changes in the attribution of the rights to use and the obligations related with the management of the common pastures. The discussion is done following the analytical grid proposed by Ostrom (2009) regarding the management of the commons.