A New Institutional Approach of Resource Use Conflicts: The Case of Poitou-Charentes

New Institutional Economics, based on the Coasean comparative approach, offers a highly useful framework for research on environmental problems. We propose a tentative analytic framework for environmental problems and we try its heuristic power by first applying it to the Poitou-Charentes region, which encounters problems of negative externalities concerning its water resource. We can thus identify the characteristics of this environmental issue through the lens of the transaction costs theory. Finally, we draw conclusions about the relative efficiency of the various governance institutions potentially available to deal with the problems of externalities in the area in question.