ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that integrating elements of the political and power issues as well as issues of construction and ontologies from political ecological improves the conceptualisation of New Institutional Political Ecology (NIPE). It proposes a further extension of the aspect in order to unpack the ideologies that contain the discourses and narratives, which provide both the legitimacy and the possibilities to increase bargaining power of particular actors over others. The chapter describes the new institutionalism (NI) model of common-pool resources management and of institutional change, showing what NI has to offer in the marriage. A history oriented and institutionally informed analysis on litigations over a pasture to be transformed into an irrigation scheme in Zambia shall illustrate the way NIPE might be used. The chapter also argues that these ontologies and epistemologies provide an ideological basis for discourses to legitimate ownership of resources in contemporary contexts and for NIPE to work out.
