Why Resource Regimes Fail in the Long Run? The Role of Institutional Complexity Traps and Transversal Transaction Costs

Environmental governance faces inconsistencies limiting its efficiency and ability to frame a sustainable co-evolution of Human and Nature. Regarding natural resource governance in developing countries, frictions in between policy design and property rights allocation cause these inconsistencies. It is consensual that there are institutional complexity and lack of integration within these governance systems. Nevertheless, very few studies provide a framework explaining how environmental governance do evolve to lead to this output. We argue that governance is subject to transversal transaction costs over the long term. They are at the origin of inconsistencies between policy design and property rights allocation which create an institutional complexity trap. We define institutional complexity traps and identify their pathways by focusing on water governance evolution in Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland from its beginning to present days. Then, we highlight the role of transversal transaction costs as a factor of institutional complexity traps