Choice and power: Resistance to technical domination in Senegal's forest decentralization

This paper examines the contest for power over forest resources between the Forest Department and elected local government in the context of decentralized forestry in Senegal. Based on ethnographic work with a forestry management intervention purporting to implement decentralization, the paper shows that power struggles center on the formation of local authorities (institutional choice) and the technical framing of forest management. It also illuminates the ways that technical claims and politico-legal counterclaims and their supporting discourses shape these struggles. The project engendered awareness among local governments about the economic and political stakes involved in forest management, which sparked resistance to the project's technically oriented institutional choices. The paper demonstrates the effects of institutional choice legitimated by discourses that privilege technical requirements and outside expertise. Importantly, the research also indicates that power struggles over resources are dynamic. Technical discourses can be countered by arguments that evoke the need for broad-based political participation, lawfulness and democracy.