The Drama of the Commons (2002) / Chapter Skim
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3 Unequal Irrigators: Heterogeneity and Commons Management in Large-Scale
3 Unequal Irrigators: Heterogeneity and Commons Management in Large-Scale
Pages 87-112
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From page 87... ...
Nevertheless, the only consensus that emerges from the multidisciplinary empirical literature is that the relationship between heterogeneity and commons use and management is complicated. Recent theoretical research in economics has clarified some of the complicated mechanisms that link inequality and commons outcomes, and we will consider much of the case-study literature in light of this economic work.
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From page 88... ...
There are many relevant types of economic inequality alone. Variants of economic heterogeneity include: inequality in wealth or income among the members of a resource-using group; inequalities in the sacrifices community members make in cooperating with commons-management regimes; inequalities in the benefits they derive from such regimes; and inequalities in outside earnings opportunities ("exit options".
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From page 89... ...
Ethnic heterogeneity such as differences in language or caste among irrigators also will affect cooperative behavior.4 An irrigating community may be socially heterogeneous if its users come from various villages. Of course, in many cases, ethnic or social heterogeneity will be correlated with economic heterogeneity, as certain castes or ethnic groups are also more likely to be richer or poorer than other groups.
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From page 90... ...
There are many of those: the success with which a community of resource users conserves a resource system (whether through a formal regulatory regime, or through social norms that prevail even in a community with no explicit resource-using rules) ; the success with which a community crafts rules for managing the commons (what Ostrom, 1990, referred to as the problem of institutional supply)
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From page 91... ...
In such a case, the smaller, noncooperative irrigators free ride on the effort of the large player.9 Olson effects are also likely if large fixed costs are involved in setting up a commons management regime. These costs might be material, such as the building of fences around pasturelands, or the construction of irrigation canals.
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From page 92... ...
This ambiguous relationship between inequality and successful commons management is borne out by more recent theoretical work in economics. DaytonJohnson and Bardhan (in press)
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From page 93... ...
They demonstrate a U-shaped relationship between cost inequality and the resource stock: Starting from low levels of cost inequality, increasing inequality first reduces, then increases, water-use efficiency.l2 Both economic and social heterogeneities may be especially salient in precluding the collective action needed to establish local institutions for managing the commons in the first place, that is, in the problem of institutional supply. Social heterogeneity increases the cost of negotiation and bargaining inherent in the process of crafting institutions; economic inequality, combined with other constraints, severely limits the possible bargaining outcomes available to commons users.
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From page 94... ...
If resource users have relatively lucrative earnings opportunities outside the commons, this can affect their individual incentives, as well as the power of social cohesion to promote cooperative behavior. In Dayton-Johnson and Bardhan's (in press)
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From page 95... ...
Trees are harvested by Fulani refugees from Guinea, who are more likely to be landless than other peasants, in order to produce charcoal for the rapidly growing urban market. A qualitatively similar situation has been described in southern Burkina Faso, where immigrants are more prone to use destructive gathering techniques in communal forests (Laurent et al., 1994~.
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From page 96... ...
are defined as those whose boundaries coincide with the effective monitoring and enforcement of shared social norms, then this provides a workable concept of social heterogeneity for irrigation communities. Indeed, this is one way of understanding the notion cited earlier of cultural homogeneity, a variant of what many authors have called social capital or social cohesion.
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From page 97... ...
analyzes data from a survey of 48 irrigation units known as ayacuts, each in a different village within six districts in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Half of the ayacuts were members of larger canal systems, and half were members of more traditional tank systems.
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From page 98... ...
Tang (1991) finds that "a low variance of the average annual family income among irrigators tends to be associated with a high degree of rule conformance and good maintenance." Tang (1992:72-73)
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From page 99... ...
Bardhan finds that landholding inequality is significantly and negatively associated with canal maintenance in the Tamil Nadu systems. For Bardhan's indicator of intravillage conflict over water, he finds evidence of a U-shaped relationship between the Gini coefficient and this indicator of performance.
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From page 100... ...
They find that disparities wherein head-enders have relatively abundant availability and tail-enders relatively scarce availability are significantly associated with poorer performance.2i Exit options. Another dimension of economic inequality already mentioned is differential earnings opportunities not fundamentally tied to the commons.
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From page 101... ...
This kind of caste homogeneity is strongly associated with the absence of intravillage conflict, but it is not significantly associated with rule conformance. (Bardhan did not include caste homogeneity in his statistical models of maintenance.)
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From page 102... ...
Inequality thus may lead to a particular set of rules under which irrigation systems do not perform as well.23 Bardhan's (2000) south Indian study also provides significant evidence that when the water allocation rules are crafted by the village elite, the latter violate the rules less frequently; otherwise the elite violate the rules more frequently.
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From page 103... ...
This finding also underscores the value of the multivariate analysis approach adopted in the studies summarized here: Such an approach allows one to isolate the effect of particular structural characteristics (like wealth inequality) while controlling for the effect of others (like social heterogeneity)
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From page 104... ...
104 cq an v: c' := o v: .
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From page 106... ...
(These and other aspects of "irrigation exceptionalism" are considered in passing in Rose, this volume:Chapter 7.) To a large extent, of course, the problems of successful commons management are not necessarily based on the characteristics of the natural resource itself as the earlier, tragedy-of-the-commons tradition would have it but rather the more prosaic problem of getting people to cooperate.
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From page 107... ...
claims is exhibited by successful commons management regimes. In one variant of this story, proportionality should neutralize the effects, good or bad, of inequality.
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From page 108... ...
Otherwise, it would be more difficult to determine the indirect effect of inequality on performance via the choice of rules. 24 To recapitulate, landholding inequality is associated with proportional cost sharing in the Indian study, and with proportional water allocation in the Mexican study.
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From page 109... ...
Baker, J.M. 1997 Common property resource theory and the kuhl irrigation systems of Himachal Pradesh, India.
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From page 110... ...
Kikuchi 2000 The Conditions of Collective Action for Local Commons Management: The Case of Irrigation in the Philippines. Unpublished manuscript, Takushoku University, Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development, and Chiba University.
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From page 111... ...
1991 Heterogeneity, Distribution and Cooperation in Common Property Resource Management. Background paper for the 1992 World Development Report, World Bank.
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From page 112... ...
Ostrom 2001 The contested role of heterogeneity in collective action: Some evidence from community forestry in Nepal. World Development 29(5)
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