Assessing ‘Devil Shifts’ and the Prospects of Collaborative Solutions in Natural Resource Management

Wildlife management is an area in which strong coalitions struggle for power and influence over policymaking. The intractability of disputes in this area could be explained by the presence of a ’devil shift’ between rival actor-coalitions that are organized around similar views on the policy problems and their solutions (i.e. their policy core beliefs). Under the working of a ‘devil shift’ actors tend to a) overestimate the power of their opponents and b) exaggerate the differences between their own, and their opponents’, policy beliefs. Situations like this have severe and negative consequences for management since they hamper communication, negotiations and the ability to find constructive compromises among rival coalitions. Collaborative management has been identified as one way to deal with these governance challenges and, based on this notion, regional collaborative wildlife conservation committees currently govern Swedish wildlife. The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay between rival coalitions, assess the presence of a devil shift over time, explain this devil shift by applying social identity theory and to investigate the prospects for collaborative solutions using Swedish wildlife management as a case study. We will study involved stakeholders’ perceptions of collaborators and opponents at two points in time (2013 and 2017) and use statistical analysis to assess the presence of a devil shift and possible changes of time. The study will elucidate the conflicts in Swedish wildlife; it will evaluate the capacity of the present collaborative system and, finally, provide theoretical contributions to the literature on policy coalitions, our knowledge on ‘devil shift’ and the prospects of collaboration in disputed policy areas. Increased understandings about the phenomenon of ‘devil shift’ is indeed needed to accomplish more effective, adaptive and legitimate management systems for natural resources- in Sweden and worldwide.