Everything changed, yet hunting rights did not : formulation of wildlife property rights in postsocialist Slovenia

Šinko, Milan (author), Malnar, Brina (author)

This 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.

• Language: English
• Keywords: forest policy, hunting rights, institutional persistence, policy regimes, postsocialist transition, wildlife governance
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 11.07.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str.
• Numbering: Vol. , issue
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-184709
• UDC: 630*15
• ISSN on article: 1756-932X
• DOI: 10.1002/eet.70119Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• COBISS.SI-ID: 284685827
• Publication date in RUL: 14.07.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Environmental policy and governance
• Shortened title: Environ. policy gov.
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• ISSN: 1756-932X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 515694617

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0151-2020
• Name: Slovensko javno mnenje