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The Drama of the Commons (2002)

Chapter: 2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability

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Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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2
Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability

Arun Agrawal

This chapter focuses on the large body of empirical work on common property. Its objective is delineate some of the most significant accomplishments of this literature, discuss some of its continuing deficiencies, and highlight shifts in research approaches and methods that can help address existing weaknesses. 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. Each such study has generated different conclusions about what counts in “successful” resource management. The multiplicity of causal variables, and the lack of attention to how the observed effects of these variables depend on the state of the context, has created significant gaps in explanations of how common property institutions work. Addressing these gaps will require important shifts in how scholars of commons conduct their research.

Such a shift is important because common property institutions continue to frame how natural resources are governed in many countries throughout the world. In addition, national governments in nearly all developing countries have turned to local-level common property institutions in the past decade as a new policy thrust to decentralize the governance of the environment. This shift in policy is no more than a belated recognition that sustainable resource management can never be independent of sustainability of collective human institutions that frame resource governance, and that local users are often the ones with the greatest stakes in sustainability of resources and institutions. But until as late as the 1970s, writ-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

ings about common property endowed their object of study with an antiquated flavor. Portrayals of the most famous example, the English Commons and their enclosures (Ault, 1952; Baker and Butlin, 1973; Thirsk, 1966; Yelling, 1977), suggested, if only by implication, that common property is a curious holdover from the past that was destined to disappear in the face of trends toward modernization.1 To many observers, placing common property in the historical past seemed so obvious as to be natural.

The most sustained theoretical engagement with community and communal forms of life, occurring as it did toward the end of the nineteenth century, gave further credence to the idea that the disappearance of norms of community and forms of communal life is an integral if perhaps regrettable part of progress. Theorists of the time, among them Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Max Weber, wrote about the effects of industrialization on existing social arrangements, and gave theoretical expression to their observations. The dire tone many of them adopted as they theorized their concerns about the future of community came to constitute further evidence confirming an implicitly teleological theory of social change where communities and communal arrangements that governed social interactions inevitably would disappear over time.2

Similarly, the ethnographic work of many anthropologists sometimes described cooperative arrangements for managing rural resources, or resources owned by indigenous peoples. It implicitly implied that such arrangements lay outside modern life. If historical studies of community located common property in the past, contemporary work by anthropologists located the commons in nonmodern, nonwestern societies. 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. Economic and political power have been seen to rest on an urban-industrial social organization and the simultaneous eclipse of rural life. It should scarcely surprise that those writing about postcolonial states found them undertaking policies that would undermine rural communities by promoting fast-paced development and rapid urbanization (Bates, 1981). The effects of emerging and spreading market relations similarly were seen to assist the vast movement of history by promoting the pursuit of individual self-interest or contractual obligations, and destroying community ethic and customary rules.4

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

These background beliefs about peasants, communities, rural life, and their future have had quite specific implications for environmental conservation. As a number of analysts have pointed out, dominant beliefs structuring environmental policies until as late as the 1980s held that markets and states were the appropriate institutional means to address externalities stemming from the public goods nature of resources. 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 mid-1980s. The shift has occurred in part as a response to developments in the field of noncooperative game theory (Falk et al., this volume:Chapter 5; Fudenberg and Maskin, 1986; Schotter, 1981; Sugden, 1984, 1989), but more directly as a result of the explosion of work on common property arrangements and common-pool resources (Berkes, 1989; McCay and Acheson, 1987; National Research Council, 1986; Ostrom, 1990). New understandings of resource institutions take common property as a viable mechanism to promote sustainable resource management. The work of scholars of common property has thus forced home a much-needed corrective to general policy prescriptions of privatization. This achievement cannot and should not be underrated. Scholars of common property, by shifting the focus of their investigations toward the analytical and structural elements that comprise successful management of the commons, have been in the vanguard of the bearers of the message that the commons and the community are an integral and indispensable part of contemporary efforts to conserve environmental resources. They have rewritten the text on how the environment should be governed.

Scholarship on common property spans many disciplines. Anthropologists, resource economists, environmentalists, historians, political scientists, and rural sociologists among others have contributed to the flood of writings on the subject. More recent empirical work on the commons draws significantly from theories of property rights and institutions.6 It also uses many other approaches eclectically, including political ecology and ethnography. Using detailed historical and contemporary studies, writings on the commons have shown that resource users often create institutional arrangements and management regimes that help them allocate benefits equitably, over long time periods, and with only limited efficiency losses (Agrawal, 1999a; McKean, 1992a; Ostrom, 1992). Much of this research typically has focused on locally situated small user groups and communities.7

Of course, not all users of common-pool resources protect their resources successfully. Outcomes of experiences of commons management are highly variable. Documentation of the performance of regimes of local resource management provides us with many cases of successful local management of common-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

pool resources. In light of this knowledge, scholars and policy makers are less likely to propose central state intervention, markets, or privatization of property rights over resources as a matter of course. Rather, many scholars examine the conditions under which communal arrangements compare favorably with private or state ownership, even on efficiency criteria, but especially where equity and sustainability are concerned. Other scholars of commons and some institutional theorists question the familiar trichotomy of private, communal, and state ownership and instead focus more directly on underlying rights and powers of access, use, management, exclusion, and transferability that are conferred through rules governing resources.8 The work initiated and carried out by scholars of common property parallels important developments in the world of policy making and resource management. Governments in more than 50 countries, according to a recent survey on national forestry policies (Food and Agriculture Organization, 1999), claim to be following new initiatives that would devolve some control over resources to local users.

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). But the most valuable resources for this chapter are studies whose conclusions are based on explicit comparisons using relatively large samples of cases (Baland and Platteau, 1996; Ostrom et al., 1994; Pinkerton, 1989; Pinkerton and Weinstein, 1995; Sengupta, 1991; Tang, 1992).

The exact definitions of terms such as efficiency, equity, or sustainability that characterize outcomes related to common-pool resource management are beyond the scope of this chapter.9 However, it might be useful to indicate that by “sustainability on the commons,” I primarily have in mind the durability of institutions that frame the governance of common-pool resources. Such a general view of sustainability is justified because few studies of the commons provide rigorous measures of their dependent variables. To use a strict definition of sustainability, therefore, is likely to make comparisons across studies difficult. At the same time, it must be admitted that most writings on the commons implicitly define successful institutions as those that last over time, constrain users to safeguard the resource, and produce fair outcomes.10

The next section begins by focusing on three comprehensive attempts to produce theoretically informed generalizations about the conditions under which groups of self-organized users are successful in managing their commons dilemmas.11 These studies are Wade ([1988] 1994), Ostrom (1990), and Baland and Platteau (1996).12 I examine the robustness of their conclusions by comparing them with findings that a larger set of studies of the commons has identified.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

Many of the conclusions of scholars of common property closely match theoretical generalizations in the literature on collective action and institutional analysis.13 But just as institutional analysts and theorists of collective action provide inferences that are sometimes in tension, scholars of common property also highlight outcomes and causal connections that often run counter to each other. One significant reason for divergent conclusions of empirical studies of commons is that most of them are based on the case study method. 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 study-based 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. I suggest that studies of the commons need to be especially attentive to areas in which case analysis is deficient, explicitly highlight the objectives of their studies, and explain the advantages of adopting a case study approach. The subsequent section proposes possible complementary methods and areas of emphasis for further research on common property.14

The main argument of the paper is that existing studies of sustainable institutions around common-pool resources suffer from two types of problems. The first is substantive—many scholars of commons have focused narrowly on institutions around common-pool resources. Such a focus on institutions is understandable in light of the objective of showing that common property arrangements can result in efficient use, equitable allocation, and sustainable conservation. But it comes at a cost. The cost is the lack of careful analysis of the contextual factors that frame all institutions and that affect the extent to which some institutions are more likely to be effective than others. The same institutional rules can have different effects on resource governance depending on variations in the biophysical, social, economic, and cultural contexts. Because existing studies of commons are relatively negligent in examining how aspects of the resource system, some aspects of user group membership, and the external social, physical, and institutional environments affect institutional durability and long-term management at the local level, we need new work that considers these questions explicitly (but see Lam, 1998; Ostrom, 1999; Ostrom et al., 1994; and Tang, 1992).

The second problem relates to methods and is more fundamental. Given the large number of factors, perhaps as many as 35 of them (see the next section), that have been highlighted as being critical to the organization, adaptability, and sustainability of common property, it is fair to suggest that existing work has not yet fully developed a theory of what makes for sustainable common-pool resource management. Systematic tests of the relative importance of factors important to sustainability, equity, or efficiency of commons are relatively uncommon (but see Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson, this volume:Chapter 3 and Lam, 1998).

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

Also uncommon are studies that connect the different variables they identify in causal chains or propose plausible causal mechanisms. Problems of incomplete model specification and omitted variables in hypothesis testing are widespread in the literature on common property. These problems of method often characterize even those writings that claim to address problems of substance.15 Therefore, it is likely that many conclusions from case studies of common-pool resource management and even from comparative studies of the commons are relevant primarily for the sample under consideration, rather than applying more generally.

Of course, there are good reasons for the existence of these problems in studies of sustainability on the commons. Some of these reasons have to do with difficulties of data availability and collection, regional and area expertise of those who study the commons, disciplinary allegiances, and the tendency in single case studies to select instances of successful common-pool resource management. But these reasons do not obviate the need for a more viable and compelling theory of common-pool resource management. Such a theory is even more important today because of the increasing number of policy experiments in commons management that are under way. These policy experiments, and their vast human and territorial coverage, make it imperative that scholars of the commons squarely confront two critical questions: (1) Which of the lessons learned from current studies are sufficiently reliable to help diagnose institutional malfunctioning?; and (2) How can studies of common property contribute reliably to greater equity and justice in the implementation of revised institutional arrangements?

ANALYSES OF SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF COMMON-POOL RESOURCES

Of the significant number of comparative studies on the commons, I have chosen the book-length studies by Wade ([1988] 1994), Ostrom (1990), and Baland and Platteau (1996). Two of them, by Wade and Ostrom, appeared more than a decade ago, and can be seen as the advance guard of a veritable flood of new writings on the commons that have put an end to the notion that common property is a historical curiosity. 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. Not only that, they use theoretical insights to defend and explain the empirical regularities they find.

It would be fair to say that each of the three books is a careful and rigorous conversation between theory and empirical investigation because of their attention to theoretical developments at the time of writing, their effort to relate theory to the cases they examine, and their contributions to common property theory.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

They all use a large body of empirical materials to test the validity of the theoretical insights they garner. Although the three books embody very different approaches to empirical comparative research, and rely on very different kinds of data, their concern for being empirically relevant and holding theory accountable to data is evident. 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. But a discussion of their conclusions and some of the implications of their work also demonstrates that their propositions about sustainability on the commons need to be supplemented.

Because there is no single widely accepted theory of what makes common property institutions sustainable, it is important to point out that differences of method are significant among these three authors. Wade relies primarily on data he collected from South Indian villages in a single district. His sample is not representative of irrigation institutions in the region, but at least we can presume that the data collection in each case is consistent. To test her theory, Ostrom uses detailed case studies that other scholars generated. The independent production of the research she samples means that all her cases may not have consistently collected data. But she examines each case using the same set of independent and dependent variables. Baland and Platteau are more relaxed in the methodological constraints they impose on themselves. To motivate their empirical analysis, they use a wide-ranging review of the economic literature on property rights and the inability of this literature to generate unambiguous conclusions about whether private property is superior to regulated common property. But to examine the validity of their conclusions, they use information from different sets of cases. In an important sense, the “model specification” is incomplete in each test (King et al., 1994).

Wade’s (1994) important work on commonly managed irrigation systems in South India uses data on 31 villages to examine when it is that corporate institutions arise in these villages and what accounts for their success in resolving commons dilemmas.16 His arguments about the origins of commons institutions point, in brief, toward environmental risks as being a crucial factor. But he also provides a highly nuanced and thoughtful set of reasons about successful management of commons. According to Wade, effective rules of restraint on access and use are unlikely to last when there are many users, when the boundaries of the common-pool resource are unclear, when users live in groups scattered over a large area, when detection of rule breakers is difficult, and so on (Wade, 1988:215).17 Wade specifies his conclusions in greater detail by classifying different variables under the headings of resources, technology, user group, noticeability,

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

relationship between resources and user group, and relationship between users and the state (1988:215-216).18 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.19 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. Only one of his conditions pertains to external relationships of the group or of other local factors.

BOX 2-1 Facilitating Conditions Identified by Wade

  1. Resource system characteristics

  1. Small size

  2. Well-defined boundaries

  1. Group characteristics

  1. Small size

  2. Clearly defined boundaries

  3. Past successful experiences—social capital

  4. Interdependence among group members

(1 and 2) Relationship between resource system characteristics and group characteristics

  1. Overlap between user group residential location and resource location

  2. High levels of dependence by group members on resource system

  1. Institutional arrangements

  1. Locally devised access and management rules

  2. Ease in enforcement of rules

  3. Graduated sanctions

(1 and 3) Relationship between resource system and institutional arrangements

  1. Match restrictions on harvests to regeneration of resources

  1. External environment

  1. Technology: Low-cost exclusion technology

  2. State:

  1. Central governments should not undermine local authority

SOURCE: Wade (1988).

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

Studies appearing since Wade’s work on irrigation institutions have added to his list of factors that facilitate institutional success, but some factors have received mention regularly. Among these are small group size, well-defined bounds on resources and user group membership, ease in monitoring and enforcement, and closeness between the location of users and the resource. Consider, for example, the eight design principles that Ostrom (1990) lists in her defining work on community-level governance of resources. She crafts these principles on the basis of lessons from a sample of 14 cases where users attempted, with varying degrees of success, to create, adapt, and sustain institutions to manage the commons. A design principle for Ostrom is “an essential element or condition that helps to account for the success of these institutions in sustaining the [common-pool resources] and gaining the compliance of generation after generation of appropriators to the rules in use” (1990:90). She emphasizes that these principles do not provide a blueprint to be imposed on resource management regimes. 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.

Although Ostrom lists eight principles, on closer examination the number of conditions turns out to be larger. For example, her first design principle refers to clearly defined boundaries of the common-pool resource and of membership in a group, and is in fact listed as two separate conditions by Wade. Her second principle, similarly, is an amalgam of two elements: a match between levels of restrictions and local conditions, and between appropriation and provision rules. Ostrom thus should be seen as considering 10, not 8, general principles as facilitating better performance of commons institutions over time (see Box 2-2).

A second aspect of the design principles, again something that parallels Wade’s facilitating conditions, is that most of them are expressed as general features of long-lived, successful commons management rather than as relationships between characteristics of the constituent analytical units or as factors that depend for their efficacy on the presence (or absence) of other variables. Thus, principle seven suggests that users are more likely to manage their commons sustainably when their rights to devise institutions are not challenged by external government authorities. This is a general principle that is supposed to characterize all commons situations. The principle says that whenever external governments do not interfere, users are more likely to manage sustainably. In contrast, principle two suggests that restrictions on harvests of resource units should be related to local conditions (rather than saying that the lower [or higher] the level of withdrawal, the more [or less] likely would be success in management). Thus, it is possible to imagine certain resource and user group characteristics for which withdrawal levels should be high, and where setting them at a low level may lead to difficulties in management. For example, when supplements to resource stock are regular and high, and user group members depend on resources significantly, setting low harvesting levels will likely lead to unnecessary rule infractions. Thus

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

BOX 2-2 Ostrom’s Design Principles

  1. Resource system characteristics

  1. Well-defined boundaries

  1. Group characteristics

  1. Clearly defined boundaries

(1 and 2) Relationship between resource system characteristics and group characteristics

None presented as important

  1. Institutional arrangements

  1. Locally devised access and management rules

  2. Ease in enforcement of rules

  3. Graduated sanctions

  4. Availability of low-cost adjudication

  5. Accountability of monitors and other officials to users

(1 and 3) Relationship between resource system and institutional arrangements

  1. Match restrictions on harvests to regeneration of resources

  1. External environment

  1. Technology: None presented as important

  2. State:

  1. Central governments should not undermine local authority

  2. Nested levels of appropriation, provision, enforcement, governance

SOURCE: Ostrom (1990).

principle two covers a wider range of variations across cases, but at the cost of some ambiguity. In contrast, principle seven is more definite, but it is easy to imagine situations where it is likely not to hold.

Finally, most of Ostrom’s principles focus primarily on local institutions, or on relationships within this context. Only two of them, about legal recognition of institutions by higher level authorities and about nested institutions, can be seen to express the relationship of a given group with other groups or authorities.

Baland and Platteau (1996), in their comprehensive and synthetic review of a large number of studies on the commons, follow a similar strategy as does Ostrom (1990). 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-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

mons, they emphasize the distinction between open access and common property arrangements and suggest that when private property regimes are compared with regulated common property systems (and when information is perfect and there are no transaction costs), then “regulated common property and private property are equivalent from the standpoint of the efficiency of resource use” (Baland and Platteau, 1996:175, emphasis in original).20 Furthermore, they argue, the privatization of common-pool resources or their appropriation and regulation by central authorities tends to eliminate the implicit entitlements and personalized relationships that are characteristic of common property arrangements. These steps, therefore, are likely to impair efficiency, and even more likely to disadvantage traditional users whose rights of use seldom get recognized under privatization or expropriation by the state.21

Their review of the existing literature from property rights and economic theory leads them to assert that “none of the property rights regimes appears intrinsically efficient” and that the reasons for which common property arrangements are criticized for their inefficiency can also haunt privatization measures. Where agents are not fully aware of ecological processes, or are unable to protect their resources against intruders, or their opportunity costs of degrading the environment are low,22 state intervention may be needed to support both private and common property (Baland and Platteau, 1996:178). In the absence of clear theoretical predictions regarding the superiority of one property regime over another, they argue in favor of attention to specific histories of concrete societies, and explicit incorporation of cultural and political factors23 into analysis. 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. Small size of a user group, a location close to the resource, homogeneity among group members, effective enforcement mechanisms, and past experiences of cooperation are some of the themes they emphasize as significant to achieve cooperation (Baland and Platteau, 1996:343-345). In addition, they highlight the importance of external aid and strong leadership.24

As is true for Ostrom, several of the factors they list are actually a joining together of multiple conditions. For example, their third point incorporates what Wade and Ostrom would count as four different conditions: the relationship between the location of the users and the resources on which they rely, the ability of users to create their own rules, the ease with which rules are understood by members of the user group and are enforced, and whether rules of allocation are considered fair. Some of their other conditions also signify more than one variable. Therefore, instead of 8 conditions, Baland and Platteau should be seen as identifying 12 conditions (see Box 2-3).

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

BOX 2-3 Conclusions Presented by Baland and Platteau as Facilitating Successful Governance of the Commons

  1. Resource system characteristics

None presented as important

  1. Group characteristics

  1. Small size

  2. Shared norms

  3. Past successful experiences—social capital

  4. Appropriate leadership—young, familiar with changing external environments, connected to local traditional elite

  5. Interdependence among group members

  6. Heterogeneity of endowments, homogeneity of identities and interests

(1 and 2) Relationship between resource system characteristics and group characteristics

  1. Overlap between user group residential location and resource location

  2. Fairness in allocation of benefits from common resources

  1. Institutional arrangements

  1. Rules are simple and easy to understand

  2. Locally devised access and management rules

  3. Ease in enforcement of rules

  4. Accountability of monitors and other officials to users

(1 and 3) Relationship between resource system and institutional arrangements

None presented as important

  1. External environment

  1. Technology: None presented as important

  2. State:

  1. Supportive external sanctioning institutions

  2. Appropriate levels of external aid to compensate local users for conservation activities

SOURCE: Baland and Platteau (1996).

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. Finally, in comparison to Wade and Ostrom, Baland

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

and Platteau pay somewhat greater attention to external forces, such as in their discussions of external aid, enforcement, and leadership with broad experience.

Box 2-4 summarizes the different conditions that Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau have identified as important in promoting sustainable use of common-pool resources. Even a quick examination of the conditions listed in Box 2-4 makes evident some of the patterns in the conclusions of these three landmark studies.25 The examples they consider have ample variation on the causal and dependent variables, and they use this variation to identify a set of conditions that facilitate greater success on the commons. Whereas Ostrom focuses primarily on the specifics of institutional arrangements in accounting for successful governance of the commons, Wade and Baland and Platteau cast a wider net, and incorporate noninstitutional variables in their conclusions. The regularities in successful management that they discover pertain to one of four sets of variables: (1) characteristics of resources, (2) nature of groups that depend on resources, (3) particulars of institutional regimes through which resources are managed, and (4) the nature of the relationship between a group and external forces and authorities such as markets, states, and technology.26

Characteristics of resources can include, for example, features such as well-defined boundaries of the resource, riskiness and unpredictability of resource flows, and mobility of the resource. Characteristics of groups, among other aspects, relate to size, levels of wealth and income, different types of heterogeneity, power relations among subgroups, and experience. 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.

The analysis of the information in Box 2-4 reveals several significant obstacles to the identification of a universal set of factors that are critical to successful governance of common-pool resources. Of these, three relate to substantive issues and two stem from conundrums of method. The missing substantive concerns of these three scholars are examined at greater length in the next section, which widens the net I cast to examine additional important research on common property institutions. Unfortunately, attempts to redress substantive issues tend to exacerbate problems of method that I explain later in the chapter. We have to contend with the possibility that attempts to create lists of critical enabling conditions that apply universally founder at an epistemological level. Lists of factors can be only a starting point in the search for a compelling theorization of how these factors are related to each other and to outcomes. Instead of focusing on lists of factors that apply to all commons institutions, it is likely more fruitful to focus on configurations of conditions that contribute to sustainability. The identification of such configurations requires sharp analytical insights. Such insights

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

BOX 2-4 Synthesis of Facilitating Conditions Identified by Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau

  1. Resource system characteristics

  1. Small size (RW)

  2. Well-defined boundaries (RW, EO)

  1. Group Characteristics

  1. Small size (RW, B&P)

  2. Clearly defined boundaries (RW, EO)

  3. Shared norms (B&P)

  4. Past successful experiences—social capital (RW, B&P)

  5. Appropriate leadership—young, familiar with changing external environments, connected to local traditional elite (B&P)

  6. Interdependence among group members (RW, B&P)

  7. Heterogeneity of endowments, homogeneity of identities and interests (B&P)

(1 and 2) Relationship between resource system characteristics and group characteristics

  1. Overlap between user group residential location and resource location (RW, B&P)

  2. High levels of dependence by group members on resource system (RW)

are most likely to follow from comparative research that is either based on carefully selected cases, or uses statistical techniques to analyze data from multiple cases after ensuring that the selection of cases conforms to theoretical specification of causal connections.

SUPPLEMENTING THE SET OF SUBSTANTIVE FACTORS

The set of factors identified by Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau is relatively deficient in considering resource characteristics. Only two aspects of resource systems find explicit mention by the three authors. Baland and Platteau do not include aspects of resources in their final conclusions at all.

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

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×
  1. Fairness in allocation of benefits from common resources (B&P)

  1. Institutional arrangements

  1. Rules are simple and easy to understand (B&P)

  2. Locally devised access and management rules (RW, EO, B&P)

  3. Ease in enforcement of rules (RW, EO, B&P)

  4. Graduated sanctions (RW, EO)

  5. Availability of low-cost adjudication (EO)

  6. Accountability of monitors and other officials to users (EO, B&P)

(1 and 3) Relationship between resource system and institutional arrangements

  1. Match restrictions on harvests to regeneration of resources (RW, EO)

  1. External environment

  1. Technology: Low-cost exclusion technology (RW)

  2. State:

  1. Central governments should not undermine local authority (RW, EO)

  2. Supportive external sanctioning institutions (B&P)

  3. Appropriate levels of external aid to compensate local users for conservation activities (B&P)

  4. Nested levels of appropriation, provision, enforcement, governance (EO)

SOURCES: RW, Wade (1988); EO, Ostrom (1990); B&P, Baland and Platteau (1996).

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. (1994) focus on two physical features of resource systems: stationarity and storage. Stationarity refers to whether a resource is mobile and storage concerns the extent to which it is possible to “collect and hold resources” (1994:309).29 Stationarity and storage, if considered as dichotomous variables, lead to a four-fold typology of common-pool resources. Resources such as wildlife are mobile and cannot be stored, and groundwater basins and lakes have stationary water

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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resources that can be stored. Shellfish and grazing lands are stationary but their degree of storage is limited, and conversely, irrigation canals with reservoirs have water resources that can be stored, but are mobile. Sheep flocks and cattle herds owned and/or managed as common property also would fall in this last category.

After examining the impact of these two physical characteristics of resources on externalities, Blomquist and colleagues conclude that these two factors have an impact on management because of their relationship to information. Greater mobility of resources and difficulties of storage make it more difficult for users to adhere to institutional solutions to common-pool resource dilemmas because of their impact on the reliability and costs of information needed for such solutions.30 This point also can be seen as a question about the extent to which resource availability is predictable, something noted by Naughton-Treves and Sanderson (1995) as well, and how unpredictability affects the abilities of users to allocate available resources or undertake activities that would augment supply (see also Wilson, this volume:Chapter 10).31

A second broad area to which the analyses by Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau pay only limited attention is the external social, institutional, and physical environment.32 Thus none of them explicitly remark on demographic issues in their conclusions, and they put equally little emphasis on market-related demands that may make local demand pressures relatively trivial. 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. 1960). Much recent scholarship links environmental degradation in a relatively straightforward fashion with population growth (Abernathy, 1993; Durning, 1989; Fischer, 1993; Hardin, 1993; Low and Heinen, 1993; Pimental et al., 1994). On the whole it is clear that the debate is highly polarized. Some scholars assert that population pressures have an enormous effect (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1991; Myers, 1991; Wilson, 1992), and a smaller but vocal group suggests the impact to be far more limited (Lappé and Shurman, 1989; Leach and Mearns, 1996; Simon, 1990; Tiffen et al., 1994; Varughese and Ostrom, 1998).

The story is somewhat similar where markets are concerned, except that the terms of the debate are less polarized and there is wider agreement that increasing integration with markets usually has an adverse impact on the management of common-pool resources, especially when roads begin to integrate distant resource systems and their users with other users and markets (Chomitz, 1995; Young, 1994). As local economies become better connected to larger markets and common property systems confront cash exchanges, subsistence users are likely to

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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increase harvesting levels because they can now exploit resources for cash income as well (Carrier, 1987; Colchester, 1994:86-87; Stocks, 1987:119-120).

It is important to note that apart from potentially higher returns, there are additional reasons why common property arrangements may be undermined by market pressures. 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. It helps by allowing them to reduce risks they would face were they to exploit the same resources individually.34 Mobility over space and through time (storage) are comparable mechanisms to address production fluctuations, but markets and exchange compete with them by encouraging individuals to specialize in different kinds of economic activities. By specializing in different occupations and exchanging their surplus output, individual producers can alleviate the need for migration (with or without their means of production) and storage. In addition, markets also form alternative arenas for the provision of credit and generation of prestige in ways that can undermine the importance of other local institutions.

Analogous to market articulation is the question of technological means available to exploit the commons. Sudden emergence of new technological innovations that transform the cost-benefit ratios of harvesting benefits from commons are likely to undermine the sustainability of institutions. Sufficient time may be necessary before users are able to adapt to the new technologies. Furthermore, technological change is capable of disrupting not just the extent to which existing mechanisms of coordination around mobility, storage, and exchange can continue to serve their members, but the very nature of the political and economic calculation that goes into the invention and definition of common property. Recall how the invention of barbed wire permitted cheap fencing, and helped convert rangelands in the U.S. west into an excludable resource.35

The arrival of markets and new technologies, and the changes they might prompt in existing resource management regimes, is not a bloodless or innocent process (Oates, 1999). Typically, new demand pressures originating from markets and technological changes are likely to create different incentives about the products to be harvested, technologies of harvest, and rates of harvest. They are also likely to change local power relations as different subgroups within a group using a common-pool resource gain different types of access and maneuver to ensure their gains (Fernandes et al., 1988; Jessup and Peluso, 1986; Peluso, 1992). And in many cases, as new market actors gain access to a particular common-pool resource, they may seek alliances with state actors in efforts to privatize commons or defend the primacy of their claims (Ascher and Healy, 1990; Azhar, 1993). Indeed, state officials themselves can become involved in the privatization of commons and the selling of products from resources that were earlier under common property arrangements (Rangarajan, 1996; Sivaramakrishnan, 1999; Skaria, 1999).

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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These specific arguments about changes in resource use and management institutions under the influence of markets are in line with more general perceptions about the transformative role and potential of capital and market forces.36 But clearly, differences in market and population pressures need greater attention in any examination of the factors that affect sustainability of commons institutions. It is important not only to attend to different levels of these pressures, but also to the effect of changes and rates of changes in them.

As the ultimate guarantor of property rights arrangements, the role of the state and overarching structures of administration have been decisive under many historical circumstances in governing common-pool resources. It is true that many communities and local user groups have the right to craft and implement new institutional arrangements. But unspecified rights and the settlement of major disputes often cannot be addressed without state intervention (Rangan, 1997). Although the three authors are more attentive to the potential role of central governments in local commons than they are to issues of population and market pressures, the nature of local-state relations requires more careful exploration.37 As an increasing number of governments decentralize control over diverse natural resources to local user groups, questions about the reasons behind such loosening of control and the effects of differences in organization of authority across levels of governance become extremely important. A large number of studies have attempted to explore these issues, either by focusing on decentralization of resource management in general (Ascher, 1995; Poffenberger, 1990) or by examining the role of resource management-related laws and national policies (Ascher and Healy, 1990; Lynch and Talbott, 1995; Repetto and Gillis, 1988). But as yet we do not have a systematic examination or clear understanding of variations in these relationships and how these variations affect the nature and outcome of common-pool resource management.

One reason scholars of commons have focused so little on external factors like markets, technology, states, and population pressures lies simply in the nature of their intellectual enterprise. Because their efforts have aimed at showing the importance of local groups, institutions, and resource-system related factors, they have focused relatively little on those factors that have received attention from many other streams of scholarship. But it seems that in focusing on the locality and the importance of local factors, they have ignored how what is local is often created in conjunction with the external and the nonlocal environment. 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.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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My argument in favor of attention to markets, demography, and the state addresses the nature and importance of contextual factors only to a partial degree. In research, the context can be defined as the encompassing variables that remain constant for a given study, but not across studies. Furthermore, the state of contextual variables affects the impact of variables that are being studied explicitly. It is likely impossible to define a priori the ensemble of factors that constitute the context because contextual factors for a given study depend on the questions it seeks to answer. However, studies of commons that examine institutional sustainability can afford to ignore the nature of markets and market-related changes, population and demographic changes, and the state and its policies only when these remain constant. For many single-time period, single-location case studies, inattention to these critical contextual variables may be justifiable. But where studies seek to develop more general arguments, attention to context and how contextual factors relate to specified causal arguments become extremely important. Even within a case study, it may be possible to examine how formerly constant (“slow”) variables change, driving and interacting with other (“fast”) variables. In such a situation, sustainability itself can be thought of as a dynamically maintained system condition rather than a static equilibrium (National Research Council, 1999).

But even where the locality itself is concerned, and even where some important features of groups that manage commons are concerned, there are important gaps in our understanding. Take three aspects of groups as an illustration: size, heterogeneity, and poverty.

According to an enormous literature on the commons and collective action, sparked in part by Olson’s seminal work (1965), smaller groups are more likely to engage in successful collective action. This conclusion is supported by Baland and Platteau (1999:773), who reiterate Olson: “The smaller the group the stronger its ability to perform collectively.” But other scholars have remarked on the ambiguities in Olson’s argument and suggested that the relationship between group size and collective action is not very straightforward. For example, Marwell and Oliver (1993:38) 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. They test their hypothesis using a sample of 28 cases from the Kumaon Himalaya. The current state of knowledge is perhaps best summarized by Ostrom (1997), who says that the impact of group size on collective action is usually mediated by many other variables. These variables include the production technology of the collective good, its degree of excludability, jointness of supply, and the level of heterogeneity in the group (Hardin, 1982:44-49). After more than 30 years of research on group size and collective action, there is still a need to tease

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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out more carefully the relationship between group size and successful collective action.

Cumulation of knowledge into a coherent and empirically supported theory has proved even more difficult in relation to group heterogeneity. It can be argued fairly that most resources are managed by groups divided along multiple axes, among them ethnicity, gender, religion, wealth, and caste (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999). The nature of heterogeneities within groups can have multiple and contradictory effects.41 Wade and Baland and Platteau highlight the importance of greater interdependence among group members as a basis for building institutions that would promote sustainable resource management. In addition, Baland and Platteau also provide an initial assessment of the nature of heterogeneities by classifying them into three types and hypothesizing that heterogeneities of endowments have a positive effect on resource management whereas heterogeneities of identity and interests create obstacles to collective action. Their first point, about heterogeneities of endowments enhancing the possibilities of collective action, is similar to that made by Olson (1965). But the categories into which they classify heterogeneities are not mutually exclusive. For example, heterogeneities of interests may lead to different types of economic specialization and different levels of endowments, which could in turn lead to mutually beneficial exchange.42 Further, empirical evidence on how heterogeneities affect collective action is still highly ambiguous (Baland and Platteau, 1999; Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson, this volume:Chapter 3; Kanbur, 1992; Quiggin, 1993; Varughese and Ostrom, 1998). It is possible, thus, even in groups that have high levels of heterogeneities of interest, to ensure collective action if some subgroups can coercively enforce conservationist institutions (Agrawal, 1999a; Jodha, 1986; Peluso, 1993; but see also Libecap, 1989, 1990). On the other hand, the role of intragroup heterogeneities in distribution may be more amenable to definition. 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.

Another locality-related factor that is critical to outcomes, and on which much research has been carried out without the emergence of a consensus, is the relation of poverty of users to their levels of exploitation of common-pool resources. Whether poverty leads to a greater reliance on the commons (Jodha, 1986) and their degradation, or whether increasing levels of wealth, at least initially, lead to greater use of commons by users is a question on whose answer contours of many commons-related policies would hinge. But to a significant degree, government interventions in this arena are based on limited information and even less reliable analysis.

For each of the three factors—size, heterogeneity, and poverty—the extent

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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to which existing research has settled the question of the direction of their effect on the sustainability of commons institutions is ambiguous at best. Whether the relationship between sustainability and these variables is negative, positive, or curvilinear seems subject to a range of other contextual and mediating factors, not all of which are clearly understood. Box 2-5 constitutes an effort to supplement the set of variables presented in Box 2-4. The additional factors presented in the box are the ones that are not followed by the initials of a particular author. Although the factors in Box 2-5 are among those that many scholars of commons would consider most important for achieving institutional sustainability on the commons, they do not form an exhaustive set of factors that affect common-pool resource management. Nor is it likely that an undisputed exhaustive set of variables can be created.43

Box 2-5 highlights the most significant variables that scholars of commons have identified as being critical to the sustainable functioning of commons institutions.44 That the set of enabling conditions presented in Box 2-5 is reasonably comprehensive can be tested by examining it in relation to the independent study and conclusions of another scholar of the commons (McKean, 1992b:275-276). McKean examines the historical experience of communities in managing Japanese forests and identifies nine conditions, which she arranges as six conclusions at the end of her essay. Her nine conditions are follows: (1) co-owners of the commons should have some autonomy of management; (2) distribution of rights to shares in commons should be carefully outlined in terms of (2a) equality, (2b) economic efficiency, and (2c) product specificity; (3) rich and poor subgroups among a community of users should both support the commons institutions; (4) there should be low incentives to harvest heavily from the commons; (5) rules should be easily enforceable; and (6) careful monitoring and sanctioning (6a) should be undertaken by the group itself and (6b) should incorporate graduated sanctions. Each of these conditions is included in Box 2-5. Admittedly, the language in which the conditions are expressed in Box 2-5 is not always the same as McKean’s. For example, McKean’s point that rich and poor subgroups should both support commons institutions is represented in different ways by two separate variables in Box 2-5: shared norms and interdependence among users.

The box makes clear that policy innovations can influence and change the state of only some of the different variables that scholars of commons consider to be important in sustainable management of resources. Current policy experiments, aiming to improve the local management of common-pool resources, need to be especially attentive to the shared conceptual lessons that studies of the commons have generated. 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

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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BOX 2-5 Critical Enabling Conditions for Sustainability on the Commons

  1. Resource system characteristics

  1. Small size (RW)

  2. Well-defined boundaries (RW, EO)

  3. Low levels of mobility

  4. Possibilities of storage of benefits from the resource

  5. Predictability

  1. Group characteristics

  1. Small size (RW, B&P)

  2. Clearly defined boundaries (RW, EO)

  3. Shared norms (B&P)

  4. Past successful experiences—social capital (RW, B&P)

  5. Appropriate leadership—young, familiar with changing external environments, connected to local traditional elite (B&P)

  6. Interdependence among group members (RW, B&P)

  7. Heterogeneity of endowments, homogeneity of identities and interests (B&P)

  8. Low levels of poverty

(1 and 2) Relationship between resource system characteristics and group characteristics

  1. Overlap between user group residential location and resource location (RW, B&P)

  2. High levels of dependence by group members on resource system (RW)

  3. Fairness in allocation of benefits from common resources (B&P)

  4. Low levels of user demand

explain the emergence of commons institutions, not their sustainable management. For example, Ostrom (1999) examines a large literature to cull four attributes of resources and seven attributes of users that she suggests are important to the emergence of self-organization among users of a resource. Some of these— feasible improvement of the resource and low discount rate—are absent from Box 2-5. 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). The

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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  1. Gradual change in levels of demand

  1. Institutional arrangements

  1. Rules are simple and easy to understand (B&P)

  2. Locally devised access and management rules (RW, EO, B&P)

  3. Ease in enforcement of rules (RW, EO, B&P)

  4. Graduated sanctions (RW, EO)

  5. Availability of low-cost adjudication (EO)

  6. Accountability of monitors and other officials to users (EO, B&P)

(1 and 3) Relationship between resource system and institutional arrangements

  1. Match restrictions on harvests to regeneration of resources (RW, EO)

  1. External environment

  1. Technology:

  1. Low-cost exclusion technology (RW)

  2. Time for adaptation to new technologies related to the commons

  1. Low levels of articulation with external markets

  2. Gradual change in articulation with external markets

  3. State:

  1. Central governments should not undermine local authority (RW, EO)

  2. Supportive external sanctioning institutions (B&P)

  3. Appropriate levels of external aid to compensate local users for conservation activities (B&P)

  4. Nested levels of appropriation, provision, enforcement, governance (EO)

SOURCES: RW, Wade (1988); EO, Ostrom (1990); B&P, Baland and Platteau (1996).

overlap between conditions that facilitate emergence and those that facilitate continued successful functioning of institutions points to the close and complex relationship between origins and continued existence, without any suggestion that the two can be explained by an identical set of facilitating conditions.

ADDRESSING PROBLEMS OF METHOD

The factors presented in Box 2-5 above, relating to resource characteristics, group features, institutional arrangements, and the external environment refer to the substantive aspects of the careful analyses that scholars of common property have conducted. Continued successful research on the commons will depend on

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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the ability of those interested in the commons to resolve some important methodological obstacles that this list of factors raises.

One important problem that is evident from the factors specified in Box 2-5 is a consequence of the fact that most of the conditions cited as facilitating successful use of common-pool resources are general: They are expected to pertain to all common-pool resources and institutions, rather than being related to or dependent on some aspect of the situation.45 As an illustration, consider the first two conditions in Box 2-5 under the broad class of resource system characteristics: small size and well-defined boundaries. According to Wade, relatively small resource systems are likely to be managed better under common property arrangements, and according to both Ostrom and Wade, resources that have well-defined boundaries are likely better managed as common property. Although these conditions are couched as general statements about all commons, it is in principle possible, and perhaps more defensible, to think of the question of resource size or boundary definition as a contingent one, where the effects of one variable depend on the state of another variable.46

It may be possible, thus, to suggest that boundaries of resources should be well defined when flows of benefits are predictable and groups relying on them stationary, but when there are large variations in flows of benefits, and/or the group relying on a resource system is mobile, then resource boundaries should be fuzzy to accommodate variations in group needs and resource flows (see also McCarthy et al., 1999). The effects of resource size, it can be similarly argued, are also contingent on the state of other variables, rather than always flowing in the same direction. Instead of accepting that small resource systems are likely to have a positive relationship with institutional sustainability, for example, it may be more defensible to hypothesize that “size of the resource system should vary with group size, and for larger resources, authority relations within a group should be organized in a nested fashion.”

Attempts to identify such conjunctural relationships are critically important for the commons literature because many of the causal relationships in commons situations may be contingent relationships where the impact of a particular variable is likely to depend on the state attained by a different causal factor, or on the relationship of the variable with some contextual factors (Rose, this volume:Chapter 7). As another example, consider the question of fairness in allocation of benefits from the commons. Typically, intuition as well as much of the scholarship on the commons suggests that fairer allocation of benefits is likely to lead to more sustainable institutional arrangements. 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. On the whole there are relatively few areas of common emphasis

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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among them. If one compares across their list of conditions, interprets them carefully, and eliminates the common conditions, 24 different conditions are still to be found (as shown in Box 2-4). Because these authors argue from theoretical foundations, the conditions they find empirically critical in their sample also can be defended on broader grounds. Thus it is difficult to eliminate a priori any of the conditions they consider important.

The discussion of substantive conclusions of Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau in the previous section reveals that even the 24 factors they have identified do not exhaust the full set of conditions that may be important in common-pool resource management.48 Once we take into account additional factors identified in the vast literature on the local governance of common-pool resources as being important in sustainably managing those resources, it is reasonable to suppose that the total number of factors that affect successful management of commons is greater than 30, and may be closer to 40. Box 2-5 lists a total of 33 factors, and there is some reason to believe that this a relatively comprehensive list of factors that potentially affect common-pool resource management. Not all of these factors are independent of each other. Some of them are empirically correlated as, for example, group size and resource size, or shared norms, interdependence among group members, and fairness in allocation rules, or ease of enforcement and supportive external sanctioning institutions. We do not, however, have any reliable way of assessing the degree of correlation among these and other variables that have emerged as important in the discussion.

Furthermore, because the effects of some variables may depend on the state of other variables and interactional effects among variables may also affect outcomes, any careful analysis of sustainability on the commons needs to incorporate interaction effects among many of the variables under consideration. As soon as we concede the possibility that between 30 and 40 variables affect the management of common-pool resources, and that some of these variables may have important interactional effects, we confront severe additional analytical problems.

When a large number of variables exist, the absence of careful research design that controls for factors that are not the subject of investigation makes it almost impossible to be sure that the observed differences in outcomes are indeed a result of hypothesized causes. 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) in relation to group size and mobility. If the researcher does not explicitly take into account the relevant variables that might affect success, then the number of selected cases must be (much) larger than the number of variables. But there are no studies of common-pool resources that develop a research design by explicitly taking into account the different variables considered critical to successful management. In an important sense, then, many of the existing works on the management of common-pool resources, especially those conducted as case studies or those that base their con-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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clusions on a very small number of cases, suffer from the problem of not specifying carefully the causal model they are testing. In the absence of such specification, qualitative studies of the commons are potentially subject to significant problems of method. Two of the most important of these problems are those stemming from “omitted variable bias” and the problem of endogeneity (King et al., 1994:168-182, 185-195). These biases resulting from deficiencies of method have the potential to produce an emphasis on causal factors that may not be relevant, ignoring of other factors that may be relevant, and the generation of spurious correlations.

An incorrect emphasis on some causal variables also may result from the underlying problem of multiple causation, where different causal factors or combinations of causal factors may have similar impacts on outcomes (Ragin, 1987). Thus unpredictable benefit flows and unfair allocation both may have adverse effects on durability of institutions. But in a particular case, it is possible that although benefit flows are unpredictable, they have a much smaller effect on outcomes compared to “unfair allocation of benefits,” and that the researcher has ignored the nature of allocation. In such a situation, the conclusions from the study would be flawed in that they would under- or overemphasize variables inappropriately. 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. But in a case study it may be difficult to discover how particular independent variables are related to each other, or the strength of their relationship to observed outcomes. In an important sense, single-case analyses, especially when they cover a single time period, limit conclusions about cause-effect relationships to bivariate statements when actual relationships are likely to be more contingent, or continuous.

The large number of variables potentially affecting the sustainability of institutions that govern common resources, thus, has important theoretical implications for future research. The most important implication is perhaps for research design. Because the requirement of a random or representative selection of cases is typically very hard to satisfy where common-pool resources are concerned (even when the universe of cases is narrowed geographically), purposive sampling easily becomes the theoretically defensible strategy for selecting cases whether the objective is statistical analysis or structured comparative case analysis. In purposive sampling, the selected cases will be chosen for the variation they represent on theoretically significant variables. This strategy can be defended both because it is easier to implement than an effort to select a representative sample, and because it requires explicit consideration of theoretically relevant variables (Bennett and George, 2001; Stern and Druckman, 2000).49

There is no general theory of purposive sampling apart from the common-sense consideration that selected cases should represent variation on theoretically

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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significant causal factors, and that the investigator should ensure that the selected cases contain at least some variation in terms of observed outcomes.50 Therefore two factors are likely to be critical in research design: awareness of the variables that are theoretically relevant, and particular knowledge of the case(s) to be researched so that the theoretically relevant variables can be operationalized. For example, when constructing a research design where the variables of interest have to do with mechanisms of monitoring and sanctioning, it would be important for the researcher to be familiar with the different forms of monitoring that groups can use. The presence or absence of a guard may only be indicative of the presence or absence of third-party monitoring, and may reveal nothing about whether the group being studied has adopted monitoring mechanisms. Other forms of monitoring could include mutual monitoring, and rotational monitoring where households in a group jointly share the tasks related to monitoring and enforcement.

The information presented in Box 2-5, organized into four major categories, can therefore be useful in the creation of a research design and for case selection. Given a particular context, it can help in the selection of the variables that need closest attention in the selection of cases. For example, if the cases to be selected lie in the same ecological zone and represent the same resource type, then variables related to resource characteristics may not be very important for case selection. The obvious tradeoff for this reduction in the number of variables is that the research will provide little or no insight into the effect of differing levels of predictability on institutional sustainability. If the research objective were to understand the effects of unpredictability, then it would be imperative to select cases where resource output varied from highly predictable to unpredictable.

However, a large-N study of commons institutions that incorporated more than 30 independent variables and their interactions would require impossibly large samples and entail astronomically high costs. Researchers conducting such studies are likely to face complex problems in interpreting the data and stating their results, even if they could collect information on thousands of cases. 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.

Larger sample sizes and statistical analyses also do not constitute a global answer to the problem of many independent variables for another reason. As argued earlier in the chapter, the set of variables that constitutes the context is potentially infinite. Multiplying the number of cases may simultaneously imply an increase in the number of contextual variables that affect outcomes in a specific selected case. Because conclusions from empirical analysis cannot conceiv-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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ably control causal variables in the same manner as a laboratory study can, it is far more important to understand more carefully the causal relations in a given study than just to test for the robust correlations that a statistical analysis generates. It is when the causal argument is well specified, the research design is carefully crafted, and the sample of cases is rigorously selected that we are most likely to be able to make definitive conclusions about factors leading to sustainability of institutional arrangements around common-pool resources.

A two-pronged approach to advance the research program related to institutional solutions to commons dilemmas, then, seems advisable. On the one hand, scholars of commons need to deploy theoretically motivated comparative case analyses to identify the most important causal mechanisms and narrow the range of relevant theoretical variables and their interactions. On the other hand, they also need to conduct large-n studies to identify the strength of causal relations. Only then would it be possible to advance our understanding of how institutional sustainability can be achieved on the commons.

Once again, the list of factors in Box 2-5 can serve as a starting point for postulating such causal links. For example, a significant body of research on the commons suggests that the nature of monitoring and enforcement is a crucial variable in determining whether existing institutional arrangements to manage the commons will endure. This is to be expected because common property institutions typically are aimed to constrain resource use, and therefore are likely to require enforcement. A complex causal chain to test this finding carefully might be constructed out of the following three hypotheses that connect some of the factors listed in Box 2-5 in causal chains (see Box 2-6):

  1. Small size of the resource and the group, low levels of mobility of the resource, and low levels of articulation with markets promote high levels of interdependence among group members;

  2. Interdependence, social capital, and low levels of poverty promote well-defined boundaries for the group and the resource; and

  3. Well-defined boundaries, ease of enforcement, and recognition of group rights by external governments lead to sustainable institutional performance.

Other variables may be causally related to social capital, ease of enforcement, or recognition of group rights, and such relationships among different variables can be elaborated on in turn. 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. The investigation of such causal chains, especially with attention to contextual variables on which particular causal effects may be dependent, therefore, continues to be necessary in commons research.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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BOX 2-6 An Illustrative Set of Causal Links in Commons Research

Durable institutions

=

f(boundary definition, enforcement, government recognition) + error

Boundary definition

=

f(group interdependence, poverty, social capital) + error

Group interdependence

=

f(group size, resource size, mobility, market pressures) + error

 

The above equations would lead to:

Durable Institutions

=

f(group size, resource size, mobility, market pressures, group interdependence, poverty, social capital, enforcement, government recognition) + error

Consider another example. Common property theorists have argued that high levels of dependence on resources in a subsistence-oriented economy are likely to be associated with better governance of common resources. Once again, a chain of causal relationships might be stated as follows (see Box 2-7):

  1. Low levels of articulation with the market, high population pressures, low availability of substitutes, and relatively less developed technology promote high dependence on common resources;

  2. 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.

Boxes 2-6 and 2-7 hint at some of the problems of method highlighted in this section. They show that different analysts, depending on the context, may choose to highlight very different causal variables to explain the same phenomenon. They also show how multiple causation is a real-world phenomenon that most commons scholars need to confront explicitly. Finally, Boxes 2-6 and 2-7 show that the factors presented in Box 2-5, when considered by an analyst in the empirical context of his or her research, can help construct causal links and thereby help in research design and case selection.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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BOX 2-7 Another Illustrative Set of Causal Links in Commons Research

Durable institutions

=

f(strong enforcement, predictable benefit flow) + error

Strong enforcement

=

f(high dependence on resource, low migration levels) + error

High dependence

=

f(market pressures, population pressures, migration levels, technology levels) + error

 

The above equations would lead to

Durable institutions

=

f(technology levels, migration levels, population pressures, market pressures, strong enforcement, predictable benefit flows) + error

To examine such causal links as presented for illustrative purposes in Boxes 2-6 and 2-7, it may not be necessary to launch fresh case studies. Given the large number of studies of commons dilemmas that exist already, it is likely possible to draw on their empirical contents and compare them systematically for understanding the operations of specific causal mechanisms. 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. A large number of studies is also important because more than one empirical measure might be needed to assess some of the theoretical variables listed in the box.

CONCLUSION

This chapter synthesizes the findings of the empirical literature on the governance of common-pool resources in an effort to identify the contributions and weaknesses of writings on the commons. The chapter suggests that scholarship on common property has made a valuable and distinctive contribution to a better understanding of resource management by focusing on the analytical and struc-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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tural elements that underpin successful governance. The vigorous flood of recent writings on the commons has presented a wealth of empirical material on how communities and states around the world are using common property institutions to facilitate better governance of natural resources. 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. In diverse contexts, other causal stories may turn out to be more compelling.

My examination of the empirical work on the commons ultimately is aimed at analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and methodological assumptions of this field of research. After reviewing several landmark studies and a large number of additional writings, I adopt the position that writings on the commons have come of age, and that it is now necessary to undertake comparative and statistical work that is undergirded by careful research design and rigorous sample selection. Only then can existing understanding of common property institutions and their role in resource management be advanced further.

The chief criticisms I highlight relate to the very large number of factors that commons scholars have postulated as being critical to successful management of natural resources, and the fact that the effect of many of these factors depends on the state assumed by other factors. Directly in tension with this finding is the way research on the commons is conducted. The case study approach remains the preferred mode of analysis of most commons scholars. Even the best known studies of the commons usually have no more than 15 to 30 cases in their sample. When the number of causal factors is higher than that, it is obvious that the case study approach to understanding how commons institutions work is inadequate, especially when authors of case studies focus on one or two factors as determining success. It is especially urgent to devise a way out of this methodological bind because the practical importance of commons research has never been greater: In the past decade, governments in nearly every developing country have turned to decentralized community-level institutions to localize their environmental policies and make them more effective.

One way out of the bind would be to undertake multiple case studies, each using the same methods and variables to ensure comparability. This would, however, be an enormously expensive affair in terms of time, finances, and keeping one’s involvement in the case at bay. Few such ambitious projects have been attempted.51 The paper instead identifies the need for new research that would

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
×

rely on more careful research design and case selection. It advocates studies that explicitly (1) postulate causal links that can be investigated through structured case comparisons, and (2) use a large number of cases that are purposively selected on the basis of causal variables.

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). It is unlikely that the cases for such an enterprise could be selected randomly. But the objective of random selection of cases is unrealistic perhaps in any case. Even an intentional selection of cases that ensures variation on independent variables will allow causal inferences and relatively low levels of bias. What is exciting about studies of commons is that the collective scholarship on local institutions has made it possible for us to approach the construction of a coherent, empirically relevant theory of the commons.

NOTES

1  

Even Netting’s sterling study (1981) of the commons in Switzerland possesses the implicit assumption that as resources become more scarce (perhaps because of increasing population pressures, or for any other reasons), common property arrangements will be replaced with more precise and efficient forms of management that private property facilitates.

2  

For a review of some of the writings around the turn of the past century, see Agrawal (1999b).

3  

Ethnographic writings that can be located in an ancestral relationship to the current scholarship on the commons form a very large set. For some illustrative and magisterial works, see Alexander (1977, 1982), Berreman (1963), Brush (1977), Cole and Wolf (1974), Dahl (1976), and Netting (1972, 1981).

4  

The view that community relations are undermined by the intrusion of state policies and market forces formed the basis of much familiar research in the middle of the 1970s (Dunn and Robertson, 1974; O’Brien, 1975; Scott, 1976). Earlier work, especially by Polanyi (1957), had an immense influence on progressive writings on community and market interactions.

5  

For a review of some of this literature, see Leach and Mearns (1996) and Ostrom (1990).

6  

A vast literature on institutions and property rights proves relevant for the study of common property. Some illustrative starting points for pursuing an interest may be Bates (1989), Eggertsson (1990), Hechter et al., (1990), Knight and Sened (1995), Libecap (1989), North (1980, 1990), and Rose (1994). Some of the early foundations of this literature can be traced back to Commons [1924 (1968)], two influential articles of Coase (1937, 1960), and contributions by scholars such as Alchian and Demsetz (1972), Cheung (1970), and Demsetz (1964). A review of some of this literature is ably presented in Ensminger’s (1992) introduction.

7  

To say that groups and resources under consideration are situated locally is not to deny the often-intimate connections that exist between external forces and what is considered to be local. In any case, the influence of research on common property is also visible in larger arenas, such as international relations (Keohane and Ostrom, 1995).

8  

See Schlager and Ostrom (1992) for a discussion of types of rights and the nature of incentives related to resource use and management that their different combinations create.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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9  

But see Chapter 1 of this volume for some brief reflections on definitional issues.

10  

See, for example, Ostrom (1990:89). Baland and Platteau (1996:285) highlight the difficulties inherent in deciding on parameters of successful management when they say, “It is perhaps too simplistic to view the experiences of common-property management in terms of outright failure or success. It is likely that a good number of these experiences are only partially successful.” They do not, however, define precisely what they mean by success.

11  

See Blomquist and Ostrom (1985) for a distinction between “commons situations” that are potentially subject to problems of crowding and depletion, and “commons dilemmas” in which private actions of users of commons have costs that cannot be overcome without collective organization.

12  

There are other valuable comparative studies of commons management as well that readers can examine at greater length than has been possible in this paper. Pinkerton and Weinstein (1995) and Steins (1999) focus on fisheries; Arnold and Stewart (1991) are concerned mainly with land-based resources in India, while Raintree (1987) examines tenure-related issues in agroforestry more widely; Peters (1994) and Lane (1998) examine livelihood importance of common grazing resources in Africa; Sengupta (1991) compares 12 cases of community irrigation management in India and the Philippines; and Redford and Padoch (1992) and Sandbukt (1995) analyze different institutional regimes around forest commons. Some general overview studies about designing sustainable institutions are also available in Hanna and Munasinghe (1995). The interested reader will find these additional texts well worth pursuing.

13  

Hardin (1982), Hechter (1987), Sandler (1992), and Lichbach (1996) provide useful reviews of the collective action literature.

14  

Those who already have an extensive familiarity with the common property literature might wish to skip directly to the discussion that is of greater interest.

15  

See, for example, Steins and Edwards (1999), who attempt to examine how context affects the incentives of users of a resource, but derive their conclusions from a single case study related to a single resource type.

16  

For some comparisons, Wade also uses data on 10 villages that have no irrigation.

17  

These empirical observations of Wade are also corroborated in theoretical terms by Ostrom et al. (1994:319), who suggest that when individuals do not trust each other, cannot communicate effectively, and cannot develop agreements, then outcomes are likely to match theoretical predictions of noncooperative behavior among fully rational individuals playing finitely repeated, complete information, common-pool resource games.

18  

Wade relies in part on Ostrom’s (1985) list of variables that facilitate collective action on the common. Wade interprets “noticeability” as “ease of detection of rule breakers” and considers it to be a function of resource size, group size, and overlap between the location of the resource and the residential location of the group. In Table 2-1, “ease in enforcement” is the variable that stands for Wade’s use of “ease of detection.”

19  

Wade states that he has a set of 13 conditions, but the first condition identified by Wade is in effect 2 different conditions: small size and clearly defined boundaries of the common-pool resource.

20  

Note that this particular result is a formal expression of Coase’s insight (1960) about the irrelevance of property rights arrangements in the absence of transaction costs. See also Lueck (1994), who examines conditions under which common property can generate greater wealth than private property.

21  

See also Maggs and Hoddinott (1999) for a study of how intrahousehold allocation of resources is affected by changes in common property regimes.

22  

Baland and Platteau see poverty as the force that often drives users to overexploit environmental resources. But because the rich can consume at even higher levels with scant attention to the environment—witness pronouncements by American President George W. Bush about not honoring campaign promises to restrict carbon emissions because of the potential effects on energy costs—it seems appropriate to recast their argument in terms of opportunity costs.

23  

See the important work of Greif (1994a) on how cultural beliefs are an integral part of institu-

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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tions and affect the evolution and persistence of different societal organizations. In another paper, Greif (1994b) examines the relationship of political institutions to economic growth. A more discursive discussion of political and social relations in the context of common-pool resources is presented by Cleaver (2000) and McCay and Jentoft (1998).

24  

The full list of factors they cite is summarized in Box 2-4. Their factors are the ones that are followed by “B&P.”

25  

For a review of experimental and game theoretic evidence on the same issues, see Kopelman et al. (this volume:Chapter 4) and Falk, et al. (this volume:Chapter 5).

26  

To a significant extent, my choice of these four broad categories to classify the conditions identified by Wade, Ostrom, and Baland and Platteau is motivated by the work carried out by Ostrom and her colleagues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University since the mid-1980s on fisheries, forests, irrigation, and pastoral resources. For attempts to establish relationships among these different sets of variables, see discussions of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (Ostrom et al., 1994) developed by scholars at Indiana. See also Oakerson (1992) and Edwards and Steins (1998).

27  

An excellent example of a study that relates characteristics of resource systems to the viability of institutions to manage resources is Netting (1981), who focuses on scarcity and value of resources and the relationship of these two factors to whether common property institutions will endure. See also Thompson and Wisen (1994) for a similar case study from Mexico. Another study that examines common property arrangements, but focuses on environmental risks, is Nugent and Sanchez (1998).

28  

The same argument would hold for some forms of humanly created products—for example, greenhouse gases or industrial pollutants—that create externalities across many groups and jurisdictions.

29  

As a reviewer of this paper pointed out, movement of resources such as wildlife, and collecting and holding resources such as irrigation water, can be seen as mobility in space and time, and both aim to address fluctuations inherent in the production functions associated with the output from a resource system. Also, in one sense, markets provide individual producers with mobility across functionally specialized tasks.

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 Bardhan (1993) on the role of scarcity, and Scherr et al. (1995).

32  

Although this paper does not focus on cultural contextual factors that may affect how local conservation and resource use processes unfold, such factors may also, in some instances, have important effects (Uphoff and Langholz, 1998).

33  

For a review of some of the writings on this subject, and for a test of the relative importance of population pressures, market pressures, and enforcement institutions on the condition of resources, see Agrawal and Yadama (1997). Regev et al. (1998) examine how market-related and technological changes may affect rates of harvest and resource use.

34  

In the absence of transaction costs related to exchange and political gains to be had from cornering the supply of scarce resources, no benefits could be derived from pooling. For a more familiar example of the redundancy of pooling institutions in the absence of transaction costs, think of insurance organizations. None of them would be necessary were pooling of individual-level risks to become pointless.

35  

Hechter (1987) discusses how new technology in the cable television industry determined excludability.

36  

The issue is not whether markets and capital availability have an effect today in comparison to the past. It is one of the degree or intensity with which market forces and capital availability have an impact at different time periods in specific places. Even if processes of globalization make the presence of money and capital more widespread, they do not accomplish it in any homogeneous fashion.

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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37  

Three studies that examine some of the complexities of state-local relationships are Gibson (1999), Ribot (1999), and Richards (1997). For analyses that focus directly on decentralization in the context of common-pool resources, see Agrawal and Ostrom (forthcoming, 2001) and Agrawal and Ribot (1999).

38  

In contrast to the current fascination of many anthropologists with history and globalization, much anthropological writing in the 1960s and 1970s saw its object of ethnographic analysis as an ensemble of timeless relations. For some critical reviews on this subject, see Dirks et al. (1994), Donham (1990), Mathur (2000), Roseberry (1989), Sahlins (1999), and Wolf (1982).

39  

Marwell and Oliver’s conclusion is for public goods rather than common goods, but even for common goods, Esman and Uphoff (1984) 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. I am grateful to Ruth Meinzen-Dick for drawing this reference to my attention.

40  

Lumpiness of monitoring refers to the situation in which a specialist guard is hired to enforce common property arrangements. In this situation, the guard needs to be paid a salary for fixed periods such as a few months or a year, rather than just for an hour or a day in the year. The exact relationship Agrawal and Goyal (2001) identify suggests that in the Kumaon Himalaya context, user groups larger than 100 households and smaller than 30 households have difficulties in finding the levels of surplus needed to ensure adequate monitoring.

41  

In the introduction to their recent discussion of inequality, Bowles and Gintis (1998:4) state, “economic theory has proven, one hears, that any but cosmetic modifications of capitalism in the direction of equality and democratic control will exact a heavy toll of reduced economic performance. Yet economic theory suggests no such thing. On the contrary, there are compelling economic arguments and ample empirical support for the proposition that there exist changes in the rules of the economic game that can foster both greater economic equality and improved economic performance…inequality is often an impediment to productivity.”

42  

For a concrete example of heterogeneities of interests leading to heterogeneous endowments and mutually beneficial exchanges, see Agrawal (1999a). More generally, exchanges between pastoralists and agriculturalists depend on distinct and heterogeneous interests and endowments in relation to land-based resources.

43  

Elster (1992:14) writing about the study of local justice, suggests that “it is a very messy business, and that it may be impossible to identify a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that constitute a theory of local justice.” His diagnosis for local justice may be equally applicable to the study of commons, as also his prescription: Instead of making a choice between theory and description, focus on “identifiable causal patterns” (Elster, 1992:16).

44  

For a discussion of what accounts for the emergence of common property institutions, see McCay (this volume:Chapter 11).

45  

Commenting on a similar tendency in political analysis, Ostrom (1998:16) recognizes that “political systems are complexly organized, and that we will rarely be able to state that one variable is always positively or negatively related to a dependent variable.”

46  

This issue of the effects of a given variable being very different depending on the state of another variable is not addressed by the ceteris paribus clause that is implicit in all the conditions stated by these authors. Depending on the state of a related variable, the effects of another variable may even run counter to the suggested direction. Thus, Turner (1999) shows how clearer definition of boundaries and strengthening of exclusionary powers in the context of high levels of variability and mobility can lead to increased conflict. Such conflicts can endure over long time periods if those who are excluded cannot find alternative occupational opportunities. Agrawal (1999a) uses the example of the raika shepherds in western Rajasthan to make a related argument about the marginalization of

Suggested Citation:"2 Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability." National Research Council. 2002. The Drama of the Commons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10287.
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mobile shepherds through firmer delineation of boundaries to resources and exclusionary powers of communities.

47  

A somewhat different but also very critical question of method is whether conclusions derived from one level of analysis or at a particular spatial/temporal level apply to other levels. Do inferences that are valid at the local level also apply to more macro-level phenomena? Although I do not address this question, both Berkes (this volume:Chapter 9) and Young (this volume:Chapter 8) examine it carefully.

48  

Indeed, it should be clear that my discussion of potentially missing variables was aimed not just to highlight deficiencies of substance in these careful analyses, but even more to focus on a general problem of method that characterizes most studies of common property, and that these studies avoid to the extent possible.

49  

For discussions of problems of bias that result from sampling on the dependent variable, see King et al. (1994) and Collier and Mahoney (1996).

50  

Although cases should not be selected so as to include some instances of success and some of failure, because this is likely to introduce bias in sample selection (King et al., 1994), it should be kept in mind that if there is no variation in outcomes, then even if the selected cases vary on the factors that are deemed causally significant, the research will reveal little about the differing effects of hypothesized causes because outcomes are invariant in the selected sample.

51  

The International Forestry Resources and Institutions Program at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, is in the middle of such an ambitious project. Members are just initiating analysis that may address some of the substantive and methodological criticisms voiced in this paper (see the collection of studies in Gibson et al., 2000). Even in this project, however, case selection can sometimes depend on availability of funding, an individual researcher’s interests, and the ease of establishing collaborative partnerships with research institutions in different countries.

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The "tragedy of the commons" is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. It has had tremendous value for stimulating research, but it only describes the reality of human-environment interactions in special situations. Research over the past thirty years has helped clarify how human motivations, rules governing access to resources, the structure of social organizations, and the resource systems themselves interact to determine whether or not the many dramas of the commons end happily. In this book, leaders in the field review the evidence from several disciplines and many lines of research and present a state-of-the-art assessment. They summarize lessons learned and identify the major challenges facing any system of governance for resource management. They also highlight the major challenges for the next decade: making knowledge development more systematic; understanding institutions dynamically; considering a broader range of resources (such as global and technological commons); and taking into account the effects of social and historical context. This book will be a valuable and accessible introduction to the field for students and a resource for advanced researchers.

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