Negotiating Locality: Decentralization and Communal Forest Management in the Guatemalan Highlands

摘要: Decentralization is a political process, concerned with the distribution of power, resources, and administrative capacities across national territories. This research analyzes nominal decentralization forest sector in Guatemala, where recent legislation situates power territorial control communal forests at municipal level. We explore local implications this legislation, especially for management, context historical asymmetries between competing localities state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, analysis public policy several municipalities Guatemala’s Western Highlands, we suggest that policies times diffuse centralization actually increase state level, putting risk even weakening successful village-level governance structures livelihoods.