To Hunt or to Protect? Discourse-coalitions in the Polish Wolf Management

Abstract

After the political transformation in Poland in 1989, the management of the wolf (Canis lupus) became strongly debated. The discussions concerned the need to protect the wolf, methods of protection and actors to be involved. Increasing social pressure resulted in a series of legal changes leading to the full protection of the species in 1998. Using the concept of discourse coalitions, we distinguished two groups of actors, which argued for or against changes of wolf policy. We also investigated the story-lines regarding the wolf and its management to find out which of them was institutionalised through the state wolf policy. Engaging with the literature on discursive politics of wildlife conservation, we suggest that the discourse coalition supporting wolf conservation successfully challenged the dominant vision of wolves by creating a new counter-discourse and promoting it, which led to a bottom-up institutional change. The discourse coalition supporting the status quo lacked discursive power to protect existing institutions. Our results contribute to the literature on human-carnivore coexistence by exploring socio-cultural factors related to the major institutional change of carnivore policy and by building capacity to critically evaluate and transcend existing paradigms for a better human-carnivore coexistence.