Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Nov 30, 1990 - Business & Economics - 280 pages
Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom, Co-Winner of The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009! The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr. Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways--both successful and unsuccessful--of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
 

Contents

A challenge
23
Interdependence independent action and collective action
38
Framing inquiry
45
Studying institutions in field settings
55
Communal tenure in high mountain meadows and forests
61
223578
65
Huerta irrigation institutions
69
13
71
CHAPTER 5
143
CHAPTER 2
146
A Sri Lankan fishery
149
Irrigation development projects in Sri Lanka
157
The fragility of Nova Scotian inshore fisheries
173
CHAPTER 6
182
A framework for analyzing institutional choice
192
A challenge to scholarship in the social sciences
214

21
78
Zanjera irrigation communities in the Philippines
82
33
86
Similarities among enduring selfgoverning CPR institutions
88
23
114
The entrepreneurship game
127
The polycentric publicenterprise game
133
AN INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY
220
References
245
61
256
71
271
The litigation game
278
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