Sequencing the political forest: Power, exclusion and the corporate hijacking of social forestry in Indonesia

Authored by researchers in our Explore network, this article analyzes how Indonesia’s social forestry programme in South Sulawesi paradoxically strengthens corporate control via 'exclusion by inclusion'. Using the sequential power analysis (SPA) framework, the authors demonstrate how elite capture and bureaucratic processes prioritize market interests and co-opt community initiatives. The study contributes to critical political ecology by showing how exclusion shifts across different phases of governance, as analyzed through the SPA-Exclusion lens.