Resource scarcity versus availability: comparative perspective on interaction between local government and interest groups in land-use changes in Poland

Every day both at the local and global scale, we experience and try to mitigate the negative consequences of decisions about land-use changes. The importance of the topic is well recognized among public and private actors, which is reflected in the current political agenda and fostered by the constantly growing interest in academia. Well-developed theories explaining the phenomena help to gain insights into the topic. However, they were mainly tested in urbanized areas. Hence there are missing answers to the questions of whether, and if so, to what extent these theories are helpful to explain land-use changes in non-urbanized areas. The dilemma posed is significant because property rights become more strict when the value or/and size of a resource is threatened. Therefore, this paper aims to fill this gap, and to this end, we apply comparative perspective between areas with greater resource scarcity and greater resource availability. With the above in mind, we embed our research in the theoretical concept of the political market and assume that land-use changes are the physical outcomes of interactions between land suppliers (local government) and land demanders (interest groups). Local governments are perceived as moderators of interest group pressure set in a specific context, and they favour those groups that can deliver greater political profits. The theoretical concept helps to answer the question: “What are the results of interaction between various interest groups and local governments for land-use changes in Poland?”. The research focuses on the actual policy outcomes, as we use Corine Land Cover (CLC) data intersected at the municipal level in Poland. The results show that in the space of interaction in urbanized areas interest groups play a more important role in the observed changes meanwhile, in non-urbanized areas, the characteristics of local government have greater explanatory power.