THE COMMONS. GOVERNANCE AND

COLLECTIVE ACTION

Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Leticia Merino

International Association for the Study of the Commons

«We need to become able go understand complexity and not

treat it as synonymous of chaos»

Elinor Ostrom

Course Plan

What are the commons, building a definition. Commons and panaceas Collective action and property rights Threats of commons governance, the

roll of institutions Polycentricity and social capital

What are the commons?

Natural resource systems or socially created, large enough that the exclusion of potential users is difficult or costly.

In a large sense they are shared resources

Their sustained use demand collective action (cooperation and coordination).

Characteristics of common pool resources: level of exclusion costs

Related to the capacity to exclude potential users from the access to resource systems and units of resources.

They result of the nature of the resource, the technologies in use and the social conditions in which use takes place.

Characteristics of common pool resources: level of subtractability

It refers to the impacts of the use of a resource of a user on the potential use for others.

It is related to the limited nature of resourceunites susceptible to be appropriated bydifferent users.

A number of resource units is no longeravailable to potential users due to previousappropriation.

Type of goods/resources

Sustractability/ Rivalry of Use

Low High

Difficulty excluding potential beneficiaries

Difficult-Costly PublicGoods

Common Pool Resources

Easy/cheap Toll Goods Private Goods

Type of goods/resourcesSubtractability/ Rivalry of Use

Low High

Excludability

Low Security, peace, knowledge, fire protection, some public spaces and cultural commons, the internet

Forests, groundwater basins, irrigation systems, lakes, the ocean, fisheries, global climate, websites

High Theaters, private clubs, toll roads

Food, clothing, private computers, automobiles.

Value of the distinction between

Types of goods (or resources) related to the level of exclusion and rivalry present in the use of goods

and

Types of property regimes related to: property rights and type of subjects of property rights.

The commons:

Today´ s complex societies depend each time more of their ability to jointly manage and maintain common resources.

The Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 1968).

Garret Hardin proposed that all resources jointly owned or used would be eventually over-exploited.

The causes of over-exploitation are population growth and freedom.

The Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 1968).

Garret Hardin proposed that rational individual decisions lead to irrational group dilemmas.

Hardin did not distinguish between open access, common property and common goods.

Lab results

When individuals make anonymous decisions and do not communicate and are and over harvest is present at very high rates … even worst than initially predicted

The perspective of the Tragedy of the Commons

Presumes that group members are never able to communicate and coordinate around a collective benefit.

Presumes that most individuals are always trapped and in a situation of impossibility to cooperate, because individual´ s restriction will always end up benefiting others than those who stand by their commitments.

The perspective of the Tragedy of the Commons

Proposes panaceas as universal optimal options for the management of the commons: state centralized control or privatization are the only viable answers for the sustained/efficient governance of all type of goods. They presume that most individuals are trapped while a few others are almost omnipotent.

Has purposely influenced public policies without a proper understanding of the causes behind the failure or success of collective institutions.

Privatization Proposals:

Perceive collective property as absence of duties and rights, as absence of property.

Presume that the division of goods in small units and their privatization always creates ecological rationality.

Does not recognize the difficulty or impossibility to divide many resources.

Does not recognize that the incentives of private owners are not always compatible with the sustainable use of common goods.

Central State Control Proposals

Presume that governments (particularly central governments) can define what is sustainable for a wide variety of circumstances.

Have enough monitoring capacities.

That the costs of burocracies are non existent or minimal.

Do not consider that the incentives of user groups to follow governmental regulations are often scarce.

Do not consider the costs of the destruction of local institutions and the creation of open access conditions, in cases where local regulations were in place.

Institutional Panaceas

Very often are based in metaphors of ideal states or markets.

Make presumptions of over simplified market or states as perfect institutions.

Do not have an adequate theory of common goods.

They are often dysfunctional, have frequent perverse, unexpected outcomes.

Mancur Olson

Individuals access a collective good moved by their own interest.

They only contribute to the maintenance of the good if: they are members of smalls group and if they face an external authoritarian rule.

Identifying the Commons

Time

Short Long

Space

Plot

Com-munity

Nation

Global

Property Rights

Coordination

Inter national

State

Col

lect

ive

A

ctio

n

Transboundary River Basins

Forests

Reservoirs

Watershed management

Check dams

Terracing

New seeds

Carbon Markets

AgroforestrySoil Carbon

IPM

Irrigation

Seed Systems

Understanding Property Rights

Images of Rights

Conventional• Rigid, unchanging• Divides people• State title• Ownership• Single user

Preferable• Fluid, dynamic• Connects people• Multiple sources• Bundles of rights• Multiple uses, users

Definitions of Property Rights“The capacity to call upon the

collective to stand behind one’s claim to a benefit stream (Bromley)”

“Claims that are recognized as legitimate” (ff. Wiber)

Only as strong as the institutions that back them up Different legitimizing institutions

Legal Pluralism

Recognize many sources of rights State law Project regulations “Customary” law Religious law Local norms

Interaction between legal frameworks

International

Religious

State

Project

Local/customary

Bundles of Rights Use rights:

Access , Withdrawal Control rights:

Exclusion Management Alienation (transfer)

Usufruct (earn income from) Strengthening someone’s control rights

weakens others’ use rights

State Collective Individual

Access

Management

Alienation

Public Property

Classic Commons Private

Property

Classic Property Rights Systems

Withdrawal

Exclusion

Bundles of Rights

Holder of Rights

Common Property

GrazingOff-season

State claims

Allocation to members

Sales to outsiders

Cropping

Cropping choices

Planting Trees

Land use decisions

Overlapping Bundles and Holders of Rights

Access

Management

Alienation

Withdrawal

Exclusion

State Collective Individual

Bundles of Rights

Holder of Rights

Forum Shopping

Start with people’s experience with access and control of resources

Individuals base their claims on whichever legal framework will give them the best hearing

Rights are negotiated, contested

Source of flexibility, change

Importance of Property Rights-1

Incentives Rights as reward for investment Users reap benefits of good

management, bear costs of mismanagement

For this to be effective, need to go beyond “sense of ownership”

Importance of Property Rights-2

Authorization, control over resource Ability to exclude outsiders Regulate members’ use of resource Transform the resource Decision-making authority

Importance of Property Rights-3

Welfare Distribution of resources Rights=assets, reduce vulnerability

“Fuzzy” property rights, or access options, may be important for survival, fallback options

Importance of Property Rights-4

Empowerment Property rights give status

To households in communityTo individuals (women) in household

Decision-making authority Standing with the government

The commons

They are better managed, administered, governed based on the agreement of key (direct or indirect) users.

Beyond cultural and context variability a common problem remains: how to coordinate the use of a resource used by numerous individuals maintaining an optimal rate of production and joint use.

Empirical evidence

Thousands of studies of long-enduring management of commons under common property systems

See www.iasc-commons.org:

Digital Library of the Commons,

IASC Impact Stories

Youtube section

and …..

The sustainable management of the commons

Faces different dilemmas.

Requires collective action.

Poses important transaction costs.

The sustainable management of the commons faces “collective action dilemmas”

The dilemma of credible commitment.

The dilemma of efficient and legitimate monitoring (monitoring costs, accountability and legitimacy).

The dilemma of institutional offer.

Dilemmas nested in other dilemmas.

Central role of trust in coping with dilemmas

Common goods´ management problems: appropriation

It refers to the need to use resource units without affecting the resource system productive capacities.

They often refer to the volume of resource units harvested/use but depending on the type of resource and the type of use they may include other issues (time of use, location, and in general impacts on the system).

Appropriation rules need to be addressed with appropriation rules.

Common goods´ management problems: provision

It refers to the different conditions required for the maintenance of the resource system. It includes actions oriented towards protection, monitoring and sanction as well as investments in operational rule design.

It implies investments of time, knowledge, money and/or other resources.

Provision problems need to be addressed with provision rules.

In a large sense the commons

Are CPR with important appropriation and provision problems resultant of particular conditions of high rivalry and difficult exclusion

and

Public resources traditionally with provision problems, resultant from the difficulty to exclude potential users from resource access (resources opened to the public) who often lack incentives to contribute to the provision of the good (or service).

Other conditions of the commons

Conjunction:Capacities of resource systems to support multiple users without significantly diminishing the aggregate benefits produced by the system.

Indivisibility:Limits within which the division of common goods do not alter sustainable management and the value of their production.

Rules

Enable (what is possible): can

Prohibit (what is not possible): cannot

Obligate (what has to be done): must

INSTITUTIONS

Set of rules in use, used to define: who can make decisions in a certain arena, which actions are allowed or prohibited and under which circumstances, which set of rules has to be used in particular

contexts, which procedures have to be followed, which information should be provided or not, which “payments” individuals should receive

depending on their actions.

Rules as Institutions

Rules are institutionalized when those more affected by then are aware of their existence, expect that others monitor their compliance with them and their un-compliance will be sanctioned.

Common sense presumes that each participant in a certain arena has full knowledge of the rules and knows that the rest of the group members also know the rules, and know that the rest know the rules. In the real world this is seldom the case

Communication and understanding of the rules are needed for the implementation and enforcement of the rules, they demand diverse actions and pose diverse costs.

Types of Rules

Boundary rules (resource and group limits) Position rules (different roles) Choice rules (what can be done) Information rules Aggregation rules (control over) Payoff Rules (costs/benefits) Scope Rules (potential outcomes)

Different levels of rules

Operational rules, related to the direct use and maintenance of the resource, including monitoring and sanctioning. They are appropriation and provision rules

Collective choice, establish how operational rules are defined.

Constitutional, frame collective choice and operational rules.

All the rules are nested in a sets of rules that define how the first group of rules can be modified.

Changing the rules:

The strategies that individuals adopt within the frame of a set of rules are modified more frequently than rules.

The change of rules increases the level of uncertainty.

It is simpler to modify operational rules than collective choice rules. They are easier to modify than constitutional rules.

Proposals for the analysis and institutional design

The users of the commons face a variety of appropriation and provision problems whose structures vary from one context to the other.

The users of the commons move in different arenas and levels of action.

Page 49

Context Action Arena

Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD)

Characteristics of the

Resource

Characteristics of the

Community

Rules in Use

Actors (Preferences

)

Action Situation

Outcomes

Patterns of

Interaction

• Collective

• Individual

The distinction between types of goods and types of property regimes enables the analysis

problems of institutional design (distribution of rights, power and responsibilities between different individuals and groups, rules)

adequate for the sustainable management of particular common goods (with particular appropriation and provision needs)

in less ideological terms than the polemic around ideal types of property regimes.

Different institutional designs create incentives and des-incentives for different resource users to:

commit with rules compliance and

commit with the sustainable management of the commons.

Social Capital

TRUSTLearning to trust others is central for

cooperation,Importance to face to face.

NETWORKS OF CIVIC COMITMENT

FUNCTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Design principles, underlying practices of successful rule systems

1. Clear boundaries of users and resources,2. Congruence with local conditions, and between

benefits and costs (appropriation and provision)3. Collective choice arrangements: Users have

procedures to make their own rules4. Regular monitoring of users and resource

conditions5. Graduated sanctions seen as legitimate6. Conflict resolution mechanisms7. Recognition of users´ rights to organize8. Nested enterprises.

Conditions of resource systems that favor robust institutions

Knowledge of the external and internal boundaries of resource systems.

Predictability of the flow of resource units.

Perception of the need and viability of collective action to promote conservation or improvement of the condition of resource system.

Conditions of user groups that favor robust institutions:

Level of dependence on the resource. Previous organizational experience. Shared vision of the resource. Trust and reciprocity. Users with more economic and political

power do not benefit from failures of resource regulation.

Discount rate.

Some of Ostrom´ s own conclusions

Rules need to fit social-ecological context

Polycentric systems may enable a fit between human action situations and nested ecological systems

Panaceas are dysfunctional

Polycentric institutions Multiple centers of decision-making,

governance Different types of institutions: state, private,

collective Formal and informal Different levels to deal with problems at

different levels Different from subsidiarity: not all institutions

are hierarchically arranged