Diagnosing Participation and Inclusion in Collective Decision-Making in the Commons: Lessons from Ecuador

The objectives of our study are to advance our understanding of the micro-level governance conditions that facilitate more inclusive communal decision-making processes. Common-pool resource scholars frequently point to participatory governance arrangements as critical for successful resource management. Recognizing local decision-making rights, however, does not necessarily ensure that the decision process or management outcomes will be inclusive or equitable. Examples from decentralized and community-based resource management illustrate how communities and outside organizations alike can struggle to create decision-making forums that include and recognize the voices of more marginalized members. Our exploratory analysis examines household participation (n = 491) in communal decisions in twelve rural indigenous communities in the central Andes of Ecuador. We use the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to structure a set of logit models to identify the household attributes and community governance conditions that make it more likely that a household engages in community meetings (attends, voices opinions, perceives opinion is respected), and agrees with the collective decisions. Our findings reiterate the challenge of gaining full participation, particularly from women, and indicate how local governance characteristics such as frequency of meetings and leader training may promote greater inclusion and overall agreement with communal decisions.