Analysis of Policy Network and Organizational Cohesion of the Stakeholders of Natural Resources of Semnan Province

Achieving integrated natural resource management fundamentally needs effective and coordinated relationship, collaboration, and synergy among various actors who have common but different responsibilities. In this sense, the foundation of comprehensive and integrated management is not compatible with centralization and top-down strategies. The aim of this paper is analysis of network and organizational cohesion of natural resources stakeholders in Semnan province. In this study, relations of existing organizations within the network have been investigated based on inter-organizational information transfer and collaboration through social network analysis method and applying macro-level and middle indexes of institutional network including; the network size, density, ties reciprocity, and centralization at macro-level and core-periphery index at middle level. Policy monitoring emphasized in present paper’s title refers to this question that how successfully natural resource integrated management policies have been realized at least within the fourth and fifth development programs. Therefore, present study is an attempt to address this question quantitatively and relying on the results of indexes of structural analysis of natural resource stakeholders’ network in the pilot area. The results of this study indicate that institutional cohesion is 40 percent (poor) and sustainability of institutional network based on reciprocity is about 47 percent (medium). Additionally the core-periphery index showed that the density of institutional network of Semnan province in core actors’ subgroup is 77 percent and in periphery actors’ subgroup is 25 percent. Research findings identify existing capacities for applyin integrated natural resources management and reveal the necessity of reducing network centralization and strengthening the relationship among various stakeholders of this section.