The Drama of the Commons (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
13 Knowledge and Questions After 15 Years of Research
13 Knowledge and Questions After 15 Years of Research
Pages 443-490
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In this chapter we summarize some key lessons from recent research, discuss seven major challenges of institutional design, identify important directions for future research, including key understudied issues, and note ways that the field can benefit from linkages to several related fields of social science research. PROGRESS OF THE FIELD Research on institutional designs for common-pool resource management has followed a development path that is similar to many other fields of social science that investigate complex real-world phenomena and develop knowledge intended to be useful for managing those phenomena.
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Other fields facing this problem include international conflict resolution (Stern and Druckman, 2000) and comparative politics and sociology (King et al., 1994; Ragin, 1987, 2000; Ragin and Becker, 1992~.
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Researchers have begun to propose hypotheses about conditions under which particular institutional forms are likely to be successful. Similarly, research has shown that simple bivariate relationships of the sustainability of resource management with the size, heterogeneity, and poverty of the user group may be positive, negative, or curvilinear, depending on contextual factors (Agrawal, Chapter 2~.
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Another example of causal models comes from experimental research attempting to understand why communication within a resource user group fosters cooperative outcomes. This research suggests three possible causal mechanisms.
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In addition, because institutional design choices are normally the result of negotiation among political actors, the technical characteristics of the options are weighed in the context of their political acceptability. Models like that in Figure 13-3 can also advance understanding by grouping variables and making connections to related fields of study.
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social capital (Putnam et al., 1993; Ostrom and Ahn, 2001; but see Abel and Stephen, 2000~. It also suggests that what has been learned in research on these constructs may be relevant to problems of designing resource management institutions.
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This model redirects attention from variables on the left of the figure, none of which can be changed directly by institutional design, toward features that are more amenable to institutional solutions, in the middle of the figured Integration of Research Results The fourth element in the development of research is the integration of results from various research methods, each of which has its own contribution to offer and its own limitations. Causal models of the sort described in the previous section are one form of integration, but here we are also referring to formal methods of integration and making sense of cross-study comparisons.
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In contrast, the permitting systems for air pollutants do not seem to have produced externalities that have disrupted these institutions. In this instance, case studies reveal the need for theorists and institutional designers to give more attention to negative externalities produced by permit holders.
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to identify the conditions under which particular interventions can successfully influence them. The framework also suggests that outcomes of interest depend on a variety of policy variables, not only on the design of resource management institutions.
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FIGURE 13-4 Schematic causal model showing typical relationships among variable types. We believe the framework described can advance theory by helping to focus on kinds of propositions likely to have theoretical significance.
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Given these conditions, whether appropriators will organize, which institutional design they will choose, and the performance and survival of that design depend on specific characteristics of the resource, the resource users, and the repertoire of institutional rules considered. One Form Does Not Fit All The research clearly demonstrates that no particular institutional design can ensure successful management of all common-pool resources.
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Understanding the indirect effects is important for making sense of the inconsistent bivariate associations that are reported in the literature. It is also important for institutional designers because, although in most cases they can do little to change characteristics of resources and resource users, they can often influence monitoring, enforcement, and other mediating factors in ways appropriate to the context they face.
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, are also applicable to the field of common-pool resource management research.5 Practitioners always need many kinds of knowledge to achieve their objectives. Some types of essential knowledge are highly situation-specific and can come only from examining current features of particular situations the forces in a particular location that are affecting a resource and resource users, and so forth.
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Some writers (e.g., Ostrom, 1990) have translated generic knowledge into sets of institutional design principles: generic advice about properties that should be designed into institutions to increase their chances of long-term success.
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Evidence exists that the "simple-rules" principle applies most strongly to institutions that engage large, diverse groups with weak community ties; small, tightly linked groups sometimes can function quite well with complex rules, provided that the users understand them well (Berkes, 1992~. How can generic knowledge be of practical value?
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Meanwhile, it is useful to interpret available research results in terms of challenges facing institutional design potential problems that must be addressed for resource management institutions to succeed. This section enumerates seven key challenges, discusses the conditions under which each one is especially critical, and notes some fairly robust strategies the sort of design principles proposed by Ostrom (1990)
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agreed to the new institutional design only because the rights to use the resource were allocated to them free of charge, while new users had to purchase their rights to use the resource (see Tietenberg, Chapter 6~. Researchers have identified several design principles that address the enforcement challenge.
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Nonuniformity has been a major problem for devising rules for maintaining air quality (Tietenberg, 1974,1980,1990) , and various institutional design features have been adopted to address it (Dol~sak, 2000~.
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. The prevalence of supportive values and attitudes is associated with cultural traditions and strength of community among the appropriators, two factors that institutional designers cannot readily change.
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The regulation of air pollution provides a good example. Airsheds are significantly affected by variables beyond the control of the institutional design (for example, wind velocity and direction, air temperature)
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n~zat~on. Adapting to Change in Social and Environmental Conditions The case-based research makes it clear that effective resource management institutions adapt to variation and change in the resources they manage and to changes in the resource user groups.
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Expanded Use of Multicase Comparative Methods for Investigating Contingent Hypotheses Theory has developed to a point that it provides contingent generalizations that can be illuminated by multicase, multivariate research methods. This development implies an increased role in the next decade for relatively large-e, multivariate research as well as for the new case study-based methods already described.
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Triangulation of methods is most likely to occur in problem-oriented settings, such as the meetings of the International Association for the Study of Common Property and research projects focused on particular institutional design problems. Affirmative efforts may have to be made to bring together representatives of different research traditions that do not normally communicate.
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Because resource institutions must deal with changing environments, however, understanding process and change in institutions is also critical to the practical tasks of institutional design and operation. As the following discussion suggests, studying the dynamics of institutions also can forge links to other active fields of social science research.
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in scientific analysis is perhaps new to the literature on resource institutions (see, e.g., Berkes, Chapter 9) , the latter literature has long emphasized the importance of participatory processes in institutional design (e.g., Ostrom, 1990, identifies participation as a principle of institutional design)
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advised institutional designers to build in procedures for changing rules, on the grounds that success in resource management often depends on the ability of institutions to learn (also see Wilson, Chapter 10~. Learning depends on responsiveness to many kinds of information: information from monitoring resource bases and users' behavior, changes in basic scientific understanding of the resource, and the information and cognitive frameworks of the resource users.
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or extinction among institutional forms? Extending Insights to a Broader Array of Common-Pool Resources Although the concept of common-pool resources is abstractly defined, much of the empirical base for theory consists of studies of local resources suitable for subsistence of local resource users.
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Technologies now enable monitoring of changes in local environments that affect global commons, thus making it possible to design management institutions at various levels. The key research question is how and to what extent can the lessons from traditional commons be applied to the new commons.
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So far, there is limited knowledge about how different replenishment schedules affect the willingness of resource users to organize and maintain management institutions. Empirical research suggests, however, that users of renewable resources pay close attention to withdrawal and replacement rates.
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For example, integration of resource users into world economies tends to make them less dependent on particular local resources, thus increasing their exit options with respect to local resources and management rules (see Figures 13-2 and 13-3 for some implications of increased exit options)
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These organizations have asserted the right to participate in institutional design; their assent may be necessary for institutions to function. Also, they are linked across scale and place in ways that may help to spread design innovations.
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This research can be aided immeasurably by the development of time-series data sets on resource management institutions. Institutional Linkages We have already noted that a central challenge of institutional design is establishing appropriate links among institutions (Young et al., 1999~.
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For example, as noted earlier, part of the response to global commons problems and to the syndrome of globalization has been the creation of links between local resource user groups and supportive outside groups, including regional, national, and international social movement organizations that in turn link to resource user groups elsewhere. These networks, which often link institutions in the global North and South (roughly, temperate, high-income countries and tropical, lowincome countries, respectively)
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However, as we have also shown, it is now possible to identify clearly a set of research directions that will lead to major advances in theoretical and practical understanding. Pursuing these directions holds promise for advancing understanding of some of the central questions of social science and for providing the kinds of generic knowledge about institutional design that resource managers need to make wise choices.
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work on international conflict resolution. 6 Much of the language in this and the next two paragraphs is taken from National Research Council (2000:15)
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481 1999 Law and the Governance of Renewable Resources. San Francisco, CA: ICS Press.
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Dayton-Johnson, J 2000 The determinants of collective action on the local commons: A model with evidence from Mexico.
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New York: Oxford University Press. International Human Dimensions Program 1999 Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change.
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Pp. 1-37 in National Research Council, International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War, Committee on International Conflict Resolution.
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Bell 2000 Rationality and solidarities: The social organization of common property resources in the Imdrhas Valley of Morocco. Human Organization 59(3)
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Pp.38-89 in National Research Council, International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War, P.C. Stern and D
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TABLE 13-A Hypotheses about Resource Management Institutions Proposed in Chapters 2 to 12 Institutional Arrangements · Effective commons management is a cross-scale co-management process (local, governmental, national, supranational) that allocates specific tasks to the proper level of social organization and ensures that cross-scale interactions produce complementary actions rather than actions that interfere with or undermine one another (Ch.
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. · Local variations in biogeophysical conditions challenge unified institutional designs made at higher levels (Ch.
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. Interaction among Factors · The emergence of common-pool resource institutions depends on collective-choice/rule-in-use and features of both the resources in question and their users (Ch.
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