Everything changed, yet hunting rights did notŠinko, Milan (Avtor) Malnar, Brina (Avtor) forest policyhunting rightsinstitutional persistencepolicy regimespostsocialist transitionwildlife governanceThis study uses the policy regime framework to examine how background conditions, institutions, and actor configurationsshaped hunting rights within the forest–wildlife policy domain during Slovenia's postsocialist transformation. Drawing onmedia analysis, in-depth interviews with policymakers, and legislative documents, it conducts a detailed process-tracing analysisof wildlife policy formulation to investigate why private landowners were unable to reclaim their presocialist hunting rights. Theanalysis shows that a normative consensus around environmental stewardship, reinforced by asymmetric power relations, was akey driver of institutional persistence. In part due to its political learning capacity, the Hunting Association of Slovenia emergedas the dominant actor, supported by center-left parties, while forest owners remained marginalized. Advocates of state-controlledhunting successfully aligned their agenda with the prevailing state-planned wildlife management paradigm and public senti-ment, thereby reinforcing continued state ownership of wildlife. The case provides an empirically grounded demonstration ofhow actor power, institutional structures, and dominant policy ideas can structurally constrain the scope and direction of policychange within governance systems, as observed at the national level, even under conditions of major systemic transformationand in the context of EU accession. The study profiles Slovenia as a normatively conservation-oriented policy context, in whichEuropean norms of “civilized” governance were mobilized to legitimize state control, while market-oriented or privatized gov-ernance models lack political legitimacy.20262026-07-14 10:16:19Članek v reviji184709UDK: 630*15ISSN pri članku: 1756-932XDOI: 10.1002/eet.70119Digital Object Identifier (DOI)COBISS_ID: 284685827sl