Local rulemaking, enforcement and compliance in state-owned forest commons

•Participation and enforcement are often seen as competing approaches for compliance promotion.•Recent experimental work highlights the potential for synergies between participation and enforcement.•Data on the behavior of fuelwood users is used to test for synergies between local rulemaking and enforcement.•Groups are most likely to comply when local rulemaking is combined with local monitoring.•Local rulemaking might be sufficient to promote similar levels of compliance in some contexts.

The literature on rule compliance is divided between those urging greater autonomy for stakeholders in rulemaking processes; and those arguing for increased enforcement. However recent experimental evidence highlights the potential for synergies between participatory rulemaking and enforcement. This paper therefore seeks to build upon these findings to explore the relationship between local rulemaking, local monitoring and compliance in field settings. The results which draw upon data about the behavior of 93 fuelwood user groups in state-owned forest commons in Asia, Africa and Latin America suggest that the average group is more likely to comply with rules when local rulemaking is combined with local monitoring. However, in some contexts it appears that local rulemaking in particular and other institutional arrangements in general may yield similar results.