Between state, society and the market: An analysis of the forest industry's governance devices in the Amazon

Abstract

The debate on the most efficient devices to cope with environmental problems usually focuses on two opposing forms of regulation: on one side, the actions based on governmental initiatives, the so-called "command and control actions", and, on the other side, those based on market mechanisms and civic initiatives aiming to constraint the aforesaid actions, such as the codes of good practice adopted by many companies. The present article discusses three regulation devices used by the forest industry in the Amazon - the forest certification, the family forest models and the forest concession policies - in order to highlight their major differences. The discussion is based on Boyer's typology of mechanisms for economic coordination (2004), enriched by a study on Economics of Convention, that classifies the forms of coordination of actors according to the nature of the main constitutive convention.