From legal acts to actual powers: Devolution and property rights in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Abstract

Devolution aims to transfer authority over forest from the state to local actors. Governments change laws and regulations to redefine the legal rights belonging to local people and state bodies with respect to forest. The effects of legal acts on the distribution of actual powers around forest have been varied, however. Changes in laws and regulations do often not translate into corresponding changes in actual property rights and forest use practices. A common phenomenon is, for example, the domination of actual powers by local elites. This paper examines the effects of devolution on property rights in two villages of Dak Lak, a province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The villages participated in forestland allocation, a program by which the provincial authorities seek to give local people more extensive rights in forests. The paper proceeds by way of a systematic comparison of legal rights, actual rights, and forest use practices in the villages. It also examines the ‘mechanisms’ by which actual rights and practices changed in reaction to new legal rights. The results of the analysis demonstrate that legal rights did not translate into analogous changes in actual rights and practices. Three years after devolution, actual rights remained the object of intense negotiations among local actors. The negotiations happened within the pre-existing distribution of powers, were influenced by the economic values associated with specific rights, and were informed by local histories and cultural norms. The findings suggest a more general framework for explaining how devolution works. Devolution affects the distribution of actual powers by modifying the positions of actors in local power relations, enticing actors to assert new actual rights and modify their forest use practices. Forest recipients' actual powers, therefore, originate out of their relations with state actors and other actors. Such an understanding of devolution has important implications for policy. Legal acts may be a suitable first step to initiate devolution. The creation of actual powers requires much broader political, economic and cultural changes, however.