Critical Polycentric Governance: Indigenous Peoples’ Tenure Security in India’s Forest

This article examines how power dynamics affect Indigenous Peoples’ (IPs) forest tenure security in supposedly polycentric governance systems—where multiple institutions operate interdependently across different jurisdictional levels. Focusing on the Rajwar peoples in India’s Uttarakhand Himalayas, the study finds that rather than truly decentralizing power, powerful state actors strengthen their control through policy design along with pragmatic and framing power tactics. Through ambiguities and inadequate subsidiarity in written rules, procedural adjustments, non-compliance, and misinterpretation of rules to undermine IPs autonomy along with framing incapacity of self and other actors in implementation and decision-making processes, powerful actors reinforce hierarchical and hegemonic governance. Based on these findings, the article problematize contemporary notions of recentralization and justice, showing how state power can persist even in seemingly decentralized polycentric systems such as India’s Indigenous forest tenure reforms.