Social Science Concepts

Governance are the actions and processes that arise from interactions between (groups of) people, which give rise to persistent practices such as institutions (including norms and treaties) and organisational structures which in turn affect peoples behavioral patterns. Such practices can be formal institutions, e.g. laws, with formal sanctioning, or informal norms embedded in the community and enforced through social sanctioning (see institutions).

Collective action refers to the mobilization of a group of people for a common goal fueled by perceived injustice, sense of identity and a belief that action can provide relief. The creation of a democratic state organization from dictatorships is one example of this. Others are the struggle for recognized rights by indigenous people or the mobilization of local fishermen for regulations to prevent harvests from external actors. Collective action thus is the precursor of governance.

Institutions are any kind of practices or organizations put in place or emergent from past interactions that affect all forms of repetitive and structured interactions between people.

Management relates to the goal-directed decisions people make when interacting with a shared resource. In its simplest sense, there is one group or one individual with a shared goal. With this definition, management is a subset of governance at a smaller scale and with a shared goal. Natural resource management means managing the way in which people and natural landscapes interact.

Value is the degree that a goods or service is desired. It can be positive or negative. It only occurs in the interaction between humans and a particular goods or service. It is subjective as it varies between people and it may change over time. A person may not realize a value until it is articulated. For example, green spaces in urban areas may be undervalued until, for example, NGO’s promote the knowledge that green spaces enhance air quality and that they promote subconscious mental health benefits in terms of stress relief. Most choices involve explicit or implicit valuations.

Capital assets are the parts of human or natural world that produce goods and/or services that are of value for humans. Commonly, one distinguishes between natural capital (e.g. land used for food or timber production), human capital (e.g. labor) or social capital (e.g. trust)

Consumption flows are the use of goods and services provided by capital assets that can be measured in physical or monetary terms

Utility is a measure of the benefits derived from using valued consumption flows from capital assets

Discounting represents the fact that humans prefer to receive benefits in the short term more than receiving the same benefit in the future. The rate of discounting depends on many things, such as the timeframe, the perspective (personal or government) and the state of the economy.

Externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.

Normative statement means relating to an ideal standard of or model, or being based on what is considered to be the normal or correct way of doing something. Normative statements are characterised by the modal verbs “should”, “would” or “could”.

Positive statement concerns what “is”, “was” or “will be” and does not make any judgement on whether this is good or bad. Positive statements should be testable.

Opportunity costs is the cost of a choice, i.e. the benefit forgone of the next best option when choosing the perceived best option.