Skip to main content

The Drama of the Commons (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability
Pages 41-86

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 41...
... In an enduring achievement, scholars of common property have shown that markets or private property arrangements and state ownership or management do not exhaust the range of plausible institutional mechanisms to govern natural resource use. But the documentation and theoretical defense of this insight has rested chiefly on the analysis and examination of hundreds of separate case studies of successful common-pool resource governance.
From page 42...
... Undoubtedly, sophisticated ethnographic analysis has contributed immensely to the current state of our knowledge about how common property institutions work. But it has also hinted despite itself, simply by virtue of its subject matter, that common property may be no more than the institutional debris of societal arrangements that somehow fall outside modernity.3 Therefore, it would be fair to say that for much of the twentieth century, the dominant theoretical lenses that have framed how social scientists view peasants and rural life have helped distort analytical vision so as to impart to community and communal forms of sociality only residual vigor, a transitional existence, and an exotic attraction.
From page 43...
... Many scholars have held that only through a recourse to these institutional arrangements would it become possible to promote sustainable resource use.5 Many still do. However, discussions over what kind of institutional arrangements account for sustainable resource use have undergone a remarkable change since the mid1980s.
From page 44...
... In synthesizing the extensive empirical work that has occurred over the past two decades, this chapter draws on rich descriptions of particular cases, comparative studies, and insights from works on social scientific methods to suggest how it might be possible to develop plausible causal mechanisms to link outcomes with causal variables. An enormous experimental and game theoretic literature also has begun to inform our understanding of how humans act under different incentive structures (see Falk et al., this volume:Chapter 5; Kopelman et al., this volume:Chapter 4~.
From page 45...
... The multiplicity of research designs, sampling techniques, and data collection methods present within each study can be welcomed on the grounds that a hundred flowers should bloom; it also means that careful specification of the contextual and historical factors relevant to findings, systematic tests of findings, and comparisons of postulated causal connections have been relatively few. In analyzing the mostly case studybased empirical literature on the commons, the following section focuses on some of the typical problems of method that plague many studies of self-organized resource management institutions.
From page 46...
... The main positive lessons I derive by comparing these authors are how they show that under some combinations of frequently occurring conditions, members of small groups can design institutional arrangements that help sustainable management of resources. They go further and identify the specific conditions that are most likely to promote local self-management of resources.
From page 47...
... For this paper, one of the most appealing aspects of their argument is that after wide-ranging discussion and consideration of many factors, each author arrives at a summary set of conditions and conclusions he or she believes to be critical to sustainability of commons institutions. Together, their conclusions form a viable starting point for the analysis of the ensemble of factors that account for sustainable institutional arrangements to manage the commons.
From page 48...
... 48 COMMON RESOURCES AND INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINABILITY relationship between resources and user group, and relationship between users and the state (1988:215-2161.~8 The full set of conditions that Wade considers important for sustainable governance are listed in Box 2-1. In all, Wade finds 14 conditions to be important in facilitating successful management of the commons he investigates.~9 Most of his conditions are general statements about the local context, user groups, and the resource system, but some of them are about the relationship between users and resources.
From page 49...
... Seven of the principles are present in a significant manner in all the robust commons institutions she analyzes. The eighth covers more complexly organized cases such as federated systems.
From page 50...
... Beginning with an examination of competing theoretical claims by scholars of different types of property regimes, they suggest that the core argument in favor of privatization "rests on the comparison between an idealized fully efficient private property system and the anarchical situations created by open access" (Baland and Platteau, 1996:175~. Echoing earlier scholarship on the com
From page 51...
... Only then might it be possible to know when people cooperate, and when inveterate opportunists dominate and make collective action impossible. After a wide-ranging review of empirical studies of common-pool resource management, and focusing on several variables that existing research has suggested as crucial to community-level institutions, Baland and Platteau arrive at conclusions that significantly overlap with those of Wade and Ostrom.
From page 52...
... 52 COMMON RESOURCES AND INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINABILITY The conclusions that Baland and Platteau reach typically are stated as general statements about users, resources, and institutions rather than about relationships between characteristics of these constituent analytical units. Only one of their conclusions is relational: contiguous residential location of group members and of the resource system.
From page 53...
... Particulars of institutional regimes have an enormous range of possibilities, but some of the critical identified aspects of institutional arrangements concern monitoring and sanctions, adjudication, and accountability. Finally, a number of characteristics pertain to the relationships of the locally situated groups, resource systems, and institutional arrangements with the external environment in the form of demographic changes, technology, markets, and the state.
From page 54...
... The limited attention to resource characteristics is unfortunate. Even if we leave aside the climatic and edaphic variables that may have an impact on levels of regeneration and possibility of use, there are grounds to believe that other
From page 55...
... AR UN AGRAWAL aspects of a resource may be relevant to how and whether users are able to sustain effective institutions.27 For example, it is easy to see that extensive movements of many forms of wildlife can make them less suited to local management alone (Moseley, 1999; Naughton-Treves and Sanderson, 1995~.28 This aspect of common-pool resources is different from Wade's argument about small size in that the issue is one of mobility of the resource, and volatility and unpredictability in the flow of benefits from a resource; it is not just about size. In a carefully argued paper on resource characteristics, Blomquist et al.
From page 56...
... But variations in levels of population and changes in demographic pressures, whether as a result of local changes or through migration, are surely significant in influencing the ability of users to follow existing rules and norms for resource management. Indeed, there is an enormous literature that focuses on questions of population and market pressures on resource use and asserts the importance of these two complex factors.33 Writings on the role of population in resource management have a long history and an impressive theoretical pedigree (Ehrlich,1968:15-16; Malthus, 1798, 1803, rpt.
From page 57...
... Market integration introduces new ways of resolving the risks that common property institutions are often designed to address. Pooling of resources that becomes possible under common property regimes helps those who are subject to such regimes.
From page 58...
... The almost exclusive focus on the local has made the work on common property vulnerable to the same criticisms that apply to the work of those anthropologists who saw their field sites as miniature worlds in themselves, changing only in response to political or economic influences from outside.38 The attention to the locality in preference to the context within which localities are shaped has thus prevented the emergence of a better understanding of how factors such as population, market demand, and state policies interact with local institutional arrangements and resource systems.
From page 59...
... emphatically claim, "a significant body of empirical research...finds that the size of a group is positively related to its level of collective action."39 Agrawal and Goyal (2001) use two analytical features of common-pool resources imperfect exclusion and lumpiness of third-party monitoring40 to hypothesize a curvilinear relationship between group size and successful collective action.
From page 60...
... Significant research on the effects of development projects and on commons suggests that better off group members often are likely to gain a larger share of benefits from a resource (see, for example, Agrawal, 2001~. This is not to say that collective action always exacerbates intragroup inequalities; rather it is simply to point out that inequalities within a group are not necessarily reduced because group members are willing to cooperate in the accomplishment of a collective goal.
From page 61...
... Among these would be fairness in the allocation of benefits from the commons; local autonomy to craft, implement, and enforce institutional arrangements that users believe to be critical in managing their resources; low-cost mechanisms for adjudication of disputes and accountability of office holders to users; and local incentives to develop substitutes. It may be argued that some of the factors listed in Box 2-5 are important to
From page 62...
... But other attributes she lists are present in Box 2-5, including predictability of benefit flow from the resource, dependence of users on the resource, and successful experience in other arenas of self-organization. Indeed, at least one of the factors that she counts as being important for emergence of commons institutions is also one of her design principles (recognition by external authorities of the ability of users to create their own access and harvesting rules)
From page 63...
... Continued successful research on the commons will depend on
From page 64...
... In a social context characterized by highly hierarchical social and political organization, however, institutional arrangements specifying asymmetric distribution of benefits may be more sustainable. But the most significant issues of method stem from the sheer number of conditions that seem relevant to the successful management of common-pool resources.47 Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau jointly identify 36 important conditions.
From page 65...
... Consider an example. One can select between large group size or high levels of mobility as the relevant causal variables that adversely affect successful management only if the selected cases are matched on other critical variables, and differ (significantly)
From page 66...
... This issue is especially acute for commons researchers because conclusions from much case study analysis are couched in terms of directional effects of independent variables: positive or negative. "Unpredictable benefit flow," it can be argued, undermines the sustainability of commons institutions.
From page 67...
... Even if it were possible to create purposive samples of cases that accommodated variation on more than 30 causal factors and their interactions, the problems related to contingent and multiple causation will not fade away. The problems of contingent and multiple causation make it necessary for researchers of the commons to also postulate causal relationships among the critical theoretical variables they have identified, and then conduct structured studies that examine the postulated causal links among variables.
From page 68...
... The effect of institutional arrangements related to monitoring and enforcement may be dwarfed by variations in population density or unpredictability of benefit flows. But it still may be possible to investigate some of the causal links listed with a relatively small number of case studies because each comparative study may be used to throw light on only one or two causal chains.
From page 69...
... High dependence on common resources and low possibilities of migration lead users to devise strong constraints on resource use, including strong enforcement mechanisms; and 3. Strong enforcement mechanisms and predictability in flow of benefits leads to sustainable institutional arrangements for governing common resources.
From page 70...
... Postulating causal links among the listed variables also can help reduce the total number of variables on which data need to be collected, and thereby make large-N studies more practical. But it should be obvious that to investigate the full ensemble of relationships depicted in Boxes 2-6 and 2-7, it will be necessary to undertake analyses that draw information from a large number of studies that contain data on each of the identified variables.
From page 71...
... According to this body of scholarship, robust institutional performance around common-pool resources is positively related to policy choices that encourage fairness in the allocation of benefits from the commons; grant autonomy to users for crafting, implementing, and enforcing institutional arrangements that they identify as being critical in managing resources; institutionalize low-cost mechanisms for adjudication of disputes; promote accountability of office holders to users; and create local-level incentives to develop substitutes. These policy choices are then likely to spur local institutional innovation where users develop clear criteria for group membership, match harvesting rules to the regenerative capacities of the resources they own, and articulate better with state-level institutions.
From page 72...
... The current stage of research on common property arrangements makes such systematic studies more possible. One means for conducting such causal tests would be to use some of the more careful case studies that already have been completed and that contain information on the critical variables related to resource systems, user groups, institutional arrangements, and external environment that I identify and present in Box 2-5 (Tang, 1992; Schlager, 1990~.
From page 73...
... 18 Wade relies in part on Ostrom's (1985) list of variables that facilitate collective action on the common.
From page 74...
... 30 Indeed, as Ostrom points out, the impact of all the independent variables on sustainability of commons institutions can be depicted in terms of a cost-benefit calculus related to individual decision making. 31 See also Bar&an (1993)
From page 75...
... find that larger local organizations were associated with greater success in rural development initiatives. The extent to which groups might have grown in size as they experienced success is not clear, but in any case their finding suggests that larger groups might function more effectively even if smaller groups are more successful in initiating collective action.
From page 76...
... Ostrom 2001 Collective action, property rights, and decentralization in resource use in India and Nepal. Politics and Society.
From page 77...
... 1989 Common Property Resources: Ecology and Community-Based Sustainable Development. London: Belhaven Press.
From page 78...
... 2000 Moral ecological rationality, institutions, and the management of common property resources. Development and Change 31:361 -383.
From page 79...
... Esman, M., and N Uphoff 1984 Local Organizations: Intermediaries in Rural Development.
From page 80...
... Lam, W.F. 1998 Governing Irrigation Systems in Nepal: Institutions, Infrastructure, and Collective Action.
From page 81...
... Marwell, G., and P Oliver 1993 The Critical Mass in Collective Action: A Micro-Social Theory.
From page 82...
... W97-2, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington. 1998 A behavioral approach to the rational choice theory of collective action.
From page 83...
... Sandler, T 1992 Collective Action: Theory and Applications.
From page 84...
... Edwards 1999 Collective action in common-pool resource management: The contribution of a social constructivist perspective to existing theory. Society and Natural Resources 12:539-557.
From page 85...
... [1988] 1994 Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.