Corruption and Wildlife Management: The Logics of Collective Action in Transnationally Protected Reserves

With the point of departure in theories about how institutions affect resource use, this project focuses on the causes and effects of corruption in wildlife management. While there is a growing consensus about the detrimental effects of corruption on wildlife management at the local and national levels, there is less knowledge about how varying national levels of corruption affect the governance of transnationally protected areas. Specifically, we focus on two protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa, managed by countries with contrasting levels of corruption. We set out to investigate how actors within these systems respond to the mixed institutional signals in such systems. Hence, the design allows for comparisons of the effects of corruption on wildlife management, but also for a theoretically driven examination of how the workings of ins