Publications

Ostromian institutions and violence: Community forestry and Nepal’s civil war

Cook, N. J., Karna, B. K., Steinberg, J., & Torrens, G. 2025. World Development 107018.

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between local, cooperative institutions for managing common-pool resources (Ostromian institutions) and the likelihood of experiencing violence in civil war. While existing literature suggests that Ostromian institutions may have a mitigating effect on violence through the generation of pro-social norms, we find evidence consistent with the theory that participation in Ostromian institutions makes communities more likely to experience violence. We study this relationship in the context of the Nepal community forestry program and the Maoist conflict from 1996-2006, where we estimate that communities that participated in the program experienced 7.2% more deaths, disappearances, and disabilities compared to non-participating communities. We rely on an instrumental variable (the locations of forest range posts) to reduce the likelihood that omitted variables, selection bias, and reverse-causality drive the results. We suggest that the apparent effect may be attributed to in-group (as opposed to universal) pro-social norm formation, but we also discuss two alternative mechanisms, including local communities as information hubs, and ideological alignments. These findings indicate the need for cautious consideration of conflict and post-conflict interventions that rely on local cooperative institution building, to ensure they do not make violence more likely.

Selected working papers

Violence in Environmental Enforcement: A Global Study and a Research Agenda

Cook, N. J. In progress.

Abstract: This study presents a novel dataset of violent events associated with environmental enforcement across the policy areas of forestry, wildlife, fishing, and protected area management from 2018 through 2023. Recorded events are widespread across 55 countries spanning all major regions. Of these events, 49 percent involved enforcement officials using violence against unarmed non-combatants, and a notable share of such events involved torture or other particularly extreme forms of violence perpetrated by enforcement officials. A large proportion of recorded events are specifically associated with protected areas. Controlling for covariates, countries with more substantial ecological threats, less-democratic countries, and countries receiving more foreign aid in the biodiversity sector are more likely to have recorded events. Importantly, the number of recorded violent events grew between 2018 and 2023. Statistical analysis suggests that the database presented in this study under-counts the number of reported events by at least 10 times and as much as 49 times. Future work is needed to understand the local factors that predispose some communities to violence as well as the impacts of policy changes on such violence, to alleviate issues related to monitoring, transparency, and event under-reporting, and to better study the effects of foreign donor involvement on violence in Global South countries. This research agenda is especially critical in light of global-scale policy efforts to expand protected areas by the year 2030.

Ostromian Institutions, Trust, and Peace: When Does Self-governance Promote Peace?

Torrens, G., Steinberg, J., & Cook, N. J. In progress.

Abstract: Non-state, localized, self-governance of common pool natural resources (which we call Ostromian institutions) co-evolve with trust, a community asset that Scott highlights as the “abstract capacity for joint action” (Democracy and Trust, pg. 275). Trust is often cited as a necessary component for the rebuilding of social order, particularly when order has broken down, as in violent conflict. Specifically, peace building literature suggests that local, informal cooperative institutions yield trust among participants, positively contribute to peace building efforts. Yet previous work on Nepal Maoist Civil War cast some doubts on this link between Ostromian institutions and peace building (Cook et al., 2025) through trust building. Using data from Senegal, we show evidence consistent with a generalized trust effect associated with exposure to Ostromian institutions. Given these contradictory findings, we develop a simple model to shed some light on when we should expect that Ostromian institutions used to govern common pool natural resources imprint social norms that can be leveraged to reduce violence and build peace.

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