While adaptation has received a fair amount of attention in the climate change debate, barriers to adaptation are the focus of a more specific, recent discussion. In this discussion, such barriers are generally treated as having a uniform, negative impact on all actors. However, we argue that the precise nature and impact of such barriers on different actors has so far been largely overlooked. Our study of two drought-prone communities in rural Ethiopia sets out to examine how female- and male-headed households adapt to climate change, particularly focusing on how a variety of barriers influence the choice of adaptation measures to varying extents. To this purpose, we built a conceptual framework based on the Sustainable Livelihood Approach. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with male- and female-headed households, community leaders and local extension workers. Our findings suggest that gender-based differences in the choice of adaptation measures at the household level are driven by cultural, social, financial and institutional barriers. Barriers to adaptation—particularly when interacting—have a differentiated impact upon different actors. This outcome hints at the need for donors and policymakers to develop intervention strategies that are sensitive to this fact.

Governments are increasingly devolving governance of natural resources from central administrations to subnational levels. Researchers routinely document the complexity and contradictions of this process, but policy prescriptions and their underlying theoretical models remain overly simplified. Going beyond classical statements in the policy literature that emphasize interjurisdictional competition, we draw on recent developments in the multidisciplinary literature on institutional theory and the growing stock of research on natural resource governance. We develop an “institutional mediation” approach, which emphasizes the multilevel nestedness of rules and highlights the role of institutional incentives, contradictions, and complementarities in shaping how actors navigate decentralization reforms. Brief case studies of decentralization of forest governance in Bolivia and Uganda lend initial credence to the claims of this approach, and preliminary hypotheses for further research are proposed.

Efforts to engage citizens in democratic forms of governance in developing societies are complicated by deeply rooted socioeconomic and political inequalities. In this article, the authors analyze the conditions under which local politicians in rural areas of Latin America are likely to open up to citizen participation in governance decisions. The analytical approach focuses on the incentive structures of local politicians under both decentralized and centralized regimes. The argument is that, regardless of regime type, participatory governance institutions are more likely to emerge when the goals of these institutions are compatible with the interests of the local executive. The authors test the argument by analyzing patterns of interaction between central and local governance actors in 390 municipal governments in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. They find that local politicians' incentive structures explain a great deal as to why local governments decide to invite citizens to take part in governance activities.