- Email: [email protected]
Studying the commons, governing common-pool resource outcomes: Some concluding thoughts
environmental science & policy 36 (2014) 86–91
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci
Studying the commons, governing common-pool resource outcomes: Some concluding thoughts Arun Agrawal * SNRE University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States
article info
abstract
Article history:
The study of common-pool resources has benefited immensely from the contributions of
Received 16 August 2013
Elinor Ostrom. Continuing advances in the field will require that scholars of commons use
Accepted 23 August 2013
the insights in her work. But they must also (1) make conceptual and theoretical advances in
Available online 23 October 2013
terms of differentiating the social and ecological outcomes related to commons governance, (2) deploy more sophisticated analytical methods to make sense of different outcomes and
Keywords:
patterns of relationships among outcomes, and (3) create better, globally representative,
Common property
hierarchically organized datasets on the commons. Efforts to build better theories and
Governance
develop a more rigorous understanding of outcomes are also necessary to keep in view the
Coupled natural and human
needs of poor, marginal populations that depend on the commons globally. # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
systems Social–ecological systems
1.
Introduction
Over the past half century the study and analysis of commonpool resources and their institutionalized governance has come a long way. Contemporary writings on the commons find inspiration in a deep-rooted tradition of work on the subject as also in more analytical models of collective action (Johnson, 2004; Laerhoven and Ostrom, 2007). Detailed historical studies of empirical examples of the commons and their governance are perhaps best exemplified by the work on the English Common Field System (Brown, 2006; Dahlman, 1980; McCloskey, 1972). But there are equally longenduring commons in other parts of the world that demonstrate the possibility of sustainable communal management of natural renewable resources (Jodha, 1986). Analytical descriptions of the enduring social puzzle that the commons exemplify have found substantial attention even when they were misspecified in some essential ways (Hardin, 1968). Political–economic arguments about the conditions under which failing commons can function better have
become classics (Berkes, 1989; Gordon, 1954; Wade, 1989). Elinor Ostrom’s ‘‘Governing the Commons’’ (1990) is the focal point of much work on the theme of communally managed natural resources. It is also the foremost example of such writings and is responsible in no small measure for her receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009. One reason the study of the commons has found lasting attention among social scientists, ecologists, and researchers interested in social–ecological systems alike is the points of tangency between the sustainable governance of the commons and long-standing social dilemmas. The mobilization and persistence of collective action (Olson, 1961; Tarrow, 1994; Tilly, 1978), the institutionalization of self-restraint to promote the public good (Fischbacher et al., 2001), and the efficient and equitable marshaling of scarce resources (Deutsch, 1975) are concerns that have motivated a wide range of social analyses since the very beginnings of the social sciences. Another reason that the study of commons finds persistent interest is the tractability of the subject to many different ways of understanding and explaining outcomes: from the qualitative to the statistical for those who are
* Tel.: +1 734 647 5948; fax: +1 734 936 2195. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.08.012
87
environmental science & policy 36 (2014) 86–91
Table 1 – Building on Ostrom’s contributions to the analysis of collective action on the commons. Origins of collective action
Maintenance of collective action
Araral Lejano and de Castro
Andersson et al. Araral Gruby and Basurto
Howlett and Giest Lejano and de Castro
Howlett and Giest Gruby and Basurto Mansbridge Lee et al.
Further development of ideas in Ostrom’s research
Directing attention to new phenomena and concepts
inductively inclined, as also from the evolutionary to the utility-maximizing modeling approaches for those who are deductively inclined. The easy application of these approaches and their different combinations make the study of commons appealing to the disciplines and sub-disciplines where the epistemic foundations of these approaches are prevalent. The studies represented in this volume of research papers and essays are reflective of a diversity of approaches to understanding the commons. Whether using case oriented, statistical, game-theoretic, evolutionary, or modeling-based analyses, these studies extend in various ways the paths in Ostrom’s many papers and book. Their richness and the range of issues they address are useful for a range of conclusions related to the commons. One useful way to think about the contributions collected in this special issue is through the familiar distinction between origins vs. the maintenance and persistence of collective action to manage resources sustainably. Within this basic distinction, these contributions can be further examined in terms of the empirical focus of their work – whether they direct attention toward phenomena and factors upon which Ostrom’s work had dwelt to a substantial degree, or whether they focus on ideas and issues that are substantive additions to the strands in Ostrom’s writings. A focus on these two dimensions permits a two-way classification elaborated in the table below (Table 1). The contributions to this special issue are located in the cells of this table, several appearing more than once based on the extent to which they are relevant to the distinctions represented by each cell. My placement of these contributions in the specific cells of the table does not capture all that they do. They are evidently also delving in other areas and developing other themes. The particular way in which I frame their content should be viewed more as an analytical device to bring out some of the key challenges that continuing scholarship on the commons needs to address as the field matures and as its analyses become more sophisticated.
2.
Origins of collective action on the commons
It would be no exaggeration to advance the claim that the central concern motivating much of the conceptual and theoretical architecture that Ostrom developed was her interest in identifying the conditions that prompt self-interested
individuals to work toward common ends. Drawing on rational choice, game theoretic, economic, psychological, and evolutionary arguments, Ostrom identified trust, reciprocity, and communication as three key building blocks of collective action (Ostrom, 1998): The eight design principles of Governing the Commons (1990) and the SES framework that she developed in her more recent contribution in Science (2011) are essentially elaborations of the factors whose presence is associated with greater trust, development of reciprocity, and face-to-face communication. Without trust and reciprocity, sustained collective action is not possible – whether on the commons or in other settings. Communication, even when it occurs only in the form of cheap talk, increases the likelihood of collective action. One might even say that communication through gestures, language, and writing is a basic feature of being human and existing socially (Newell and Simon, 1972). Araral’s paper (2014) attempts to reassess the contributions of Ostrom to the study of common as also those of a large number of other commons researchers. Based on a review of the different aspects of these writings, he directs attention to three different ‘‘generations’’ in the research on commons. According to him, the first focused on market/privatization and state/regulation as the solution to the problem of overexploitation of collectively owned resources; the second sought to identify the conditions under which collectively owned resources are successfully managed, and the third is currently in the process of emerging, with a set of research questions he identifies as being of fundamental importance. These research questions cover a range of issues: can Ostrom’s arguments be extended to larger-scale commons (Keohane and Ostrom, 1994)? To what extent are the design principles generalizable beyond her cases (Agrawal, 2001; Cox et al., 2010)? Are well-managed commons not an instance of privatization of renewable resources (McKean, 2000)? Can privatization and incorporation of private incentives to act environmentally responsibly be an effective solution to the problem of overused commons (Anderson and Leal, 1991; Cashore, 2002)? These and other important questions have been a staple of work on the commons and on renewable resource governance, but addressing them better will require methodological innovation, better data, and indeed, greater theoretical sophistication – themes to which this conclusion will return. Lejano and de Castro (2014) may be viewed as confirming some of Ostrom’s insights at a general level in their focus on
88
environmental science & policy 36 (2014) 86–91
the role of other-regarding motivations (Frey and Jegen, 2001) for collective action. Ostrom did not view a purely selfinterested, utility-maximizing, rational individual as the source of decisions and actions on the commons even if she conceded that such a construct could at times be analytically useful. But Lejano and de Castro take a step further through their consideration of what they call ‘‘non-utilitrian ethics’’ (see also Kelman, 1981; MacIntyre and Carus, 1999). They suggest in their paper that there is a class of environmental problems for which it is necessary to supplement the motivations of individual with other-regarding concerns. Such concerns are evident in different social, network, or cultural settings. They use the case of recycling to apply a model of other-regarding behavior in which the payoffs to the individual are partly a function of contributions to the public good – in this case recycling. According to their analysis, it is only through a thorough-going incorporation of such concerns in everyday environmental actions that a more real-world model of individual action will be possible. They further observe that the nature of the choice-making individual is itself not fixed, but a consequence of the context in which individuals find themselves. Even as Araral and Lejano and Castro press for attention to some key areas of emphasis in thinking about origins of collective action on the commons, other contributions to this volume seek to analyze collective phenomena through ideas that both draw on Ostrom’s work and add to her work. Howlett and Giest (2014), apply the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 2005) to the formation of climate research networks. Although Ostrom did not write about networks, Howlett and Giest show that the key building blocks of her theory also provide an important analytical window on networks. Cooperative interactions among potential network members are necessary even for a network structure to emerge and be sustained, and – trust, reciprocity, and communication, facilitated by the design principles, lie at the roots of cooperative interactions. In addition, they emphasize entrepreneurship and leadership in both the creation and maintenance of networks. In emphasizing the role of entrepreneurs, their paper resonates with a long tradition of research on collective action and the commons – political entrepreneurs and leaders have been identified as one solution to the problem of collective action by scholars from Hardin (1982), Young (1991), and Baland and Platteau (1996) to Schneider et al. (2011) and Feiock and Carr (2001) more recently.
3.
Maintenance of collective action
Studies of the commons in the wake of Governing the Commons have sought to identify the range of causal factors that are associated with or contribute to positive institutional, resource-related, and livelihood outcomes. Although Ostrom identified her design principles as being most directly about long-term institutional sustainability, subsequent writings have tried also to decipher the association of these institutional and other biophysical, socio-economic, demographic, and various contextual factors with resource condition and economic benefits to users as well (Agrawal, 2001; Ostrom,
2007, 2009; Pagdee et al., 2006). These different contributions are less attentive to the distinction between origins vs. maintenance of collective action, instead compressing the different factors associated with origins and maintenance into a single set of ‘‘enabling conditions’’ or ‘‘core variables.’’ Several contributions to this special section focus more on what enables collective action in the real world of commons governance and management to persist and for the governance of the commons to be effective. Both Araral (2014, discussed above) and Andersson et al. (2014) are examples. Andersson et al. build on a substantial body of work on monitoring, enforcement, and compliance to emphasize how institutions for rule-making and sanctioning rule-breakers are also critical to local commons governance. Indeed, one might suggest that rule making for resources, monitoring of users, sanctioning violators, and adjudicating disputes are connected, successive features of institutional arrangements for managing natural resources, and the lack of one of these features may threaten the effectiveness of others in reducing overuse. Their intervention and findings, based on data from 200 municipalities in Bolivia, is a useful corrective to the focus on monitoring that characterizes a number of recent studies of the commons (cf. Persha et al., 2011). Gruby and Basurto (2014) undertake a much needed investigation of the parallels and differences between writings on the commons and other subdisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields of social science scholarship on environmental processes and outcomes. The study of commons draws its theoretical inspiration from nearly all the social science disciplines: among them, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, and History. Each of these disciplines is also affiliated with environmental researchoriented subdisciplines, e.g. environmental economics, environmental politics, ecological economics, historical ecology, human geography, environmental anthropology. In addition, fields such as resilience science, feminist environmentalism, and political ecology have their own genealogies and interconnections with the different sciences. The Gruby and Basurto paper begins a conversation with one of these subfields of writings on the environment and natural resources – human geography, and in particular, constructivist approaches to the study of the environment. Using the idea of polycentric governance as their lodestone, their case study of marine conservation in the Republic of Palau highlights how declines in autonomy to make rules and manage resources may be associated with tendencies toward centralization as also a decline in the effectiveness of resource governance arrangements. The papers by Mansbridge (2014) and Lee et al. (2014) are also interested in how extra-local governance structures work, but they examine different aspects of such governance. Mansbridge focuses on the state, whereas Lee et al. assess the role of boundary organizations. Mansbridge analyzes how nested governance of common-pool resources in polycentric systems needs more insistent attention than it has received by scholars of the commons. Indeed, Ostrom’s research contributions have often been criticized for a lack of attention to the state and its structuring role in all contemporary resource governance. Mansbridge’s elaboration of the four different roles state agencies play – provide an arena for negotiations,
environmental science & policy 36 (2014) 86–91
information provision, threat of sanctions, and support of monitoring – is thus a welcome enhancement to the existing conceptual work on the commons. Taking a somewhat different optic, Lee et al. analyze how boundary organizations such as the Risø Center, an international research center on energy, climate change and sustainable development, can work to reduce the costs of collective action. By reducing the costs of communication and providing a forum for dialog and interactions, recalling both the role of political entrepreneurs and the information provision role of state agencies, boundary organizations are critical agents in enabling collective action for the provision of collective goods.
4.
Looking ahead
Although research on the commons is one of the more successful research programs in the social and environmental sciences, the contributions to this volume attest to the substantial progress that remains. For too long, scholars of the commons have not differentiated clearly between the different measures and dimensions of the commons outcomes in which they are interested, often remaining satisfied with relatively vague terms such as sustainability of the commons, long-term viability of the commons, or conditions of the commons. At other times, they have taken positive associations between some hypothesized causal factor and an outcome to stand for a similar association between that causal factor and other outcome dimensions (Agrawal and Benson, 2011). ‘‘Successful institutions’’ is not the same as ‘‘sustainably managed resources’’ is not the same as ‘‘biodiverse resource systems’’ is not the same as ‘‘sustainability of commons dependent livelihoods’’ – whatever the concrete measure of each of these outcome concepts. Forest, fishery, irrigation, and pastoral commons are sub-species of coupled natural and human systems. It is insufficient to say at this point in the evolution of research on the commons that some causal factor of interest – whether it is small group size or local enforcement or graduate sanctions or some other factor – is positively or negatively associated with commons outcomes. Commons outcomes are diverse, and attending to this diversity is critical if future research on the common is to move beyond its current preoccupations. If it is necessary to distinguish between the many different outcomes of the governance of common-pool resource systems – among them, livelihoods benefits from the resource, equity in the distribution of benefits, diversity of biological systems, and long-term sustainability of the resource system – and that these outcomes may not be tightly correlated, then the task facing scholars of commons is only starting. But it is a task for which scholars of commons start with a tremendous advantage compared to those studying most other coupled natural and human systems – few other fields have such a well-developed framework from which to begin. Indeed, Ostrom’s insights form an enormously valuable starting point to think about the theoretical relationships that explain how specific causal processes may lead to specific outcomes, when one should expect multiple positive outcomes to occur together, and when one should expect there to be tradeoffs between achieving different outcomes. This is a stupendous
89
task. But it is also one that is extraordinarily exciting. The study of coupled natural and human systems is for the most part in its infancy. Scholars of environmental processes are at the dawn of discovering the relationships and drivers of the many outcomes in the different subsystems that constitute the coupled natural and human systems. Doing so will require a methodological transformation in the study of the commons. In outlining some of the gaps in case and comparative case-oriented approaches to the study of commons, Agrawal (2001) and Agrawal and Chhatre (2006) called for a more targeted use of quantitative and statistical analyses. Recent years have also seen the use of simulation method and the application of complexity science inspired techniques to the analyses of commons dilemmas (Agrawal et al., 2013; Janssen and Ostrom, 2006). But the quantitative estimation of the causal effects of policy interventions, demographic shifts, and institutional changes on environmental outcomes has now become more methodologically sophisticated than the regression analyses still used by many commons scholars (Andam et al., 2008, 2010; Ferraro et al., 2011). Scholars of decentralization, governance, protected areas, and institutional arrangements in the fields of development (Chattopadhyay and Duflo, 2004; Duflo et al., 2007) and even those interested in explaining deforestation have begun to use experimental techniques and rigorous statistical matching-based approaches to infer causal relationships more rigorously than is possible only by relying on regression analyses. The point is not that regression and multi-factorial associational analyses are not useful – they certainly are. And when only observational data is possible, as is the case for many areas of research on the commons, there is no getting around careful multivariate analyses of such data. But even in such situations, if sufficient information is available, more careful analyses may be possible. Combining existing data analysis approaches with new methods that allow for more rigorous hypothesis testing will become more critical with time. The use of new methods to understand cause-outcome relationships more reliably will thus also require a data revolution. Substantial amounts of new data, integration of locally specific data on the commons with publicly available global datasets on land change, climate, demography, topography, and marine biophysical features, and the hierarchical organization of datasets is likely to be an important next step in the ongoing evolution of research on the commons. To highlight the many different empirical and conceptual steps that can establish the study of the commons on a more rigorous scientific footing is not to ignore the obvious necessity of a more historical, reflective, critical outlook on the relationship between the governance of common pool resources and the needs of the marginal, poor, often disadvantaged populations that depend on them (Cochran and Ray, 2009; Wagner and Talakai, 2007). Scholars of commons have been criticized in the past for being insufficiently attentive to questions of power, politics, and inequality (Goldman, 1997). Effective governance of the commons for long-term sustainability, maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in common pool resources is not necessarily synonymous with equitable allocation of benefits. This is precisely why a more differentiated analysis of
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outcomes is necessary. And if decisions to enhance sustainability of commons and common governance occur at the expense of equity in allocation of benefits or lead to the marginalization of indigenous peoples or women, the need for such choices must be spelt out clearly instead of being based on a sweeping assumption that sustainable governance is also equitable governance. The conceptual, methodological, and data revolutions necessary in the years ahead are no doubt daunting. But the prize is equally attractive: a theoretically grounded, solid, comprehensive, and differentiated understanding of how specific causal factors influence different outcomes related to common-pool resource systems. It is worth striving toward this prize.
references
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Cochran, J., Ray, I., 2009. Equity reexamined: a study of community-based rainwater harvesting in Rajasthan, India. World Development 37 (2) 435–444. Cox, M., Arnold, G., Toma´s, S.V., 2010. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecology and Society 15 (4) 38. Dahlman, C.J., 1980. The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution. Cambridge University Press. Deutsch, M., 1975. Equity, equality, and need: what determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? Journal of Social issues 31 (3) 137–149. Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., Kremer, M., 2007. Using randomization in development economics research: a toolkit. Handbook of Development Economics 4, 3895–3962. Feiock, R.C., Carr, J.B., 2001. Incentives, entrepreneurs, and boundary change: a collective action framework. Urban Affairs Review 36 (3) 382–405. Ferraro, P.J., Hanauer, M.M., Sims, K.R., 2011. Conditions associated with protected area success in conservation and poverty reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (34) 13913–13918. Fischbacher, U., Ga¨chter, S., Fehr, E., 2001. Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters 71 (3) 397–404. Frey, B.S., Jegen, R., 2001. Motivation crowding theory. Journal of Economic Surveys 15 (5) 589–611. Goldman, M., 1997. Customs in common: the epistemic world of the commons scholars. Theory and Society 26 (1) 1–37. Gordon, H.S., 1954. The economic theory of a common-property resource: the fishery. The Journal of Political Economy 62 (2) 124–142. Gruby, R., Basurto, X., 2014. Multi-level governance for large marine commons: politics and polycentricity in Palau’s protected area network. Environmental Science and Policy 36, 48–60. Hardin, G., 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162 (3859) 1243–1248. Hardin, R., 1982. Collective Action. RFF Press, Washington, DC. Howlett, M., Giest, S., 2014. The pre-conditions of environmental governance: the role of network management in the development of climate change policy. Environmental Science and Policy 36, 37–47. Janssen, M.A., Ostrom, E., 2006. Empirically based, agent-based models. Ecology and Society 11 (2) 37. Jodha, N.S., 1986. Common property resources and rural poor in dry regions of India. Economic and Political Weekly 21 (27) 1169–1181. Johnson, C., 2004. Uncommon ground: the ‘poverty of history’ in common property discourse. Development and Change 35 (3) 407–434. Kelman, S., 1981. Cost-benefit analysis: an ethical critique. Regulation 5, 33. Keohane, R.O., Ostrom, E. (Eds.), 1994. Local Commons and Global Interdependence. SAGE. Laerhoven, F.V., Ostrom, E., 2007. Traditions and trends in the study of the commons. International Journal of the Commons 1 (1) 3–28. Lee, E., Jung, C.S., Lee, M.K., 2014. The potential role of boundary organizations in the climate regime. Environmental Science and Policy 36, 24–36. Lejano, R.P., de Castro, F.F., 2014. Social dimensions of the environment: the invisible hand of community. Environmental Science and Policy 36, 73–85. Mansbridge, J., 2014. The role of the state in governing the commons. Environmental Science and Policy 36, 8–10. MacIntyre, A.C., Carus, P., 1999. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, vol. 20. Duckworth, London.
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McCloskey, D.N., 1972. The enclosure of open fields: preface to a study of its impact on the efficiency of English agriculture in the eighteenth century. The Journal of Economic History 32 (1) 15–35. McKean, M.A., 2000. Common property: what is it, what is it good for, and what makes it work. People and Forests: Communities, Institutions, and Governance 27–55. Newell, A., Simon, H.A., 1972. Human Problem Solving, vol. 14. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Olson, M., 1961. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press. Ostrom, E., 1998. A behavioral approach to the rational choice theory of collective action. American Political Science Review 92 (1) 1–22. Ostrom, E., 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Ostrom, E., 2007. A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (39) 15181–15187. Ostrom, E., 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social–ecological systems. Science 325, 419–422. Pagdee, A., Kim, Y.S., Daugherty, P.J., 2006. What makes community forest management successful: a meta-study from community forests throughout the world. Society and Natural Resources 19 (1) 33–52.
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Persha, L., Agrawal, A., Chhatre, A., 2011. Social and ecological synergy: local rulemaking, forest livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation. Science 331 (6024) 1606–1608. Schneider, M., Teske, P., Mintrom, M., 2011. Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government. Princeton University Press. Tarrow, S., 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tilly, C., 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. McGraw-Hill, New York. Wade, R., 1989. Village Republics. Cambridge University Press. Wagner, J., Talakai, M., 2007. Customs, commons, property, and ecology: case studies from Oceania. Human Organization 66 (1) 1–10. Young, O.R., 1991. Political leadership and regime formation: on the development of institutions in international society. International Organization 45 (3) 281–308. Arun Agrawal is a professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on institutions, governance, and the political economy of sustainable development.
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci
Studying the commons, governing common-pool resource outcomes: Some concluding thoughts Arun Agrawal * SNRE University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States
article info
abstract
Article history:
The study of common-pool resources has benefited immensely from the contributions of
Received 16 August 2013
Elinor Ostrom. Continuing advances in the field will require that scholars of commons use
Accepted 23 August 2013
the insights in her work. But they must also (1) make conceptual and theoretical advances in
Available online 23 October 2013
terms of differentiating the social and ecological outcomes related to commons governance, (2) deploy more sophisticated analytical methods to make sense of different outcomes and
Keywords:
patterns of relationships among outcomes, and (3) create better, globally representative,
Common property
hierarchically organized datasets on the commons. Efforts to build better theories and
Governance
develop a more rigorous understanding of outcomes are also necessary to keep in view the
Coupled natural and human
needs of poor, marginal populations that depend on the commons globally. # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
systems Social–ecological systems
1.
Introduction
Over the past half century the study and analysis of commonpool resources and their institutionalized governance has come a long way. Contemporary writings on the commons find inspiration in a deep-rooted tradition of work on the subject as also in more analytical models of collective action (Johnson, 2004; Laerhoven and Ostrom, 2007). Detailed historical studies of empirical examples of the commons and their governance are perhaps best exemplified by the work on the English Common Field System (Brown, 2006; Dahlman, 1980; McCloskey, 1972). But there are equally longenduring commons in other parts of the world that demonstrate the possibility of sustainable communal management of natural renewable resources (Jodha, 1986). Analytical descriptions of the enduring social puzzle that the commons exemplify have found substantial attention even when they were misspecified in some essential ways (Hardin, 1968). Political–economic arguments about the conditions under which failing commons can function better have
become classics (Berkes, 1989; Gordon, 1954; Wade, 1989). Elinor Ostrom’s ‘‘Governing the Commons’’ (1990) is the focal point of much work on the theme of communally managed natural resources. It is also the foremost example of such writings and is responsible in no small measure for her receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009. One reason the study of the commons has found lasting attention among social scientists, ecologists, and researchers interested in social–ecological systems alike is the points of tangency between the sustainable governance of the commons and long-standing social dilemmas. The mobilization and persistence of collective action (Olson, 1961; Tarrow, 1994; Tilly, 1978), the institutionalization of self-restraint to promote the public good (Fischbacher et al., 2001), and the efficient and equitable marshaling of scarce resources (Deutsch, 1975) are concerns that have motivated a wide range of social analyses since the very beginnings of the social sciences. Another reason that the study of commons finds persistent interest is the tractability of the subject to many different ways of understanding and explaining outcomes: from the qualitative to the statistical for those who are
* Tel.: +1 734 647 5948; fax: +1 734 936 2195. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.08.012
87
environmental science & policy 36 (2014) 86–91
Table 1 – Building on Ostrom’s contributions to the analysis of collective action on the commons. Origins of collective action
Maintenance of collective action
Araral Lejano and de Castro
Andersson et al. Araral Gruby and Basurto
Howlett and Giest Lejano and de Castro
Howlett and Giest Gruby and Basurto Mansbridge Lee et al.
Further development of ideas in Ostrom’s research
Directing attention to new phenomena and concepts
inductively inclined, as also from the evolutionary to the utility-maximizing modeling approaches for those who are deductively inclined. The easy application of these approaches and their different combinations make the study of commons appealing to the disciplines and sub-disciplines where the epistemic foundations of these approaches are prevalent. The studies represented in this volume of research papers and essays are reflective of a diversity of approaches to understanding the commons. Whether using case oriented, statistical, game-theoretic, evolutionary, or modeling-based analyses, these studies extend in various ways the paths in Ostrom’s many papers and book. Their richness and the range of issues they address are useful for a range of conclusions related to the commons. One useful way to think about the contributions collected in this special issue is through the familiar distinction between origins vs. the maintenance and persistence of collective action to manage resources sustainably. Within this basic distinction, these contributions can be further examined in terms of the empirical focus of their work – whether they direct attention toward phenomena and factors upon which Ostrom’s work had dwelt to a substantial degree, or whether they focus on ideas and issues that are substantive additions to the strands in Ostrom’s writings. A focus on these two dimensions permits a two-way classification elaborated in the table below (Table 1). The contributions to this special issue are located in the cells of this table, several appearing more than once based on the extent to which they are relevant to the distinctions represented by each cell. My placement of these contributions in the specific cells of the table does not capture all that they do. They are evidently also delving in other areas and developing other themes. The particular way in which I frame their content should be viewed more as an analytical device to bring out some of the key challenges that continuing scholarship on the commons needs to address as the field matures and as its analyses become more sophisticated.
2.
Origins of collective action on the commons
It would be no exaggeration to advance the claim that the central concern motivating much of the conceptual and theoretical architecture that Ostrom developed was her interest in identifying the conditions that prompt self-interested
individuals to work toward common ends. Drawing on rational choice, game theoretic, economic, psychological, and evolutionary arguments, Ostrom identified trust, reciprocity, and communication as three key building blocks of collective action (Ostrom, 1998): The eight design principles of Governing the Commons (1990) and the SES framework that she developed in her more recent contribution in Science (2011) are essentially elaborations of the factors whose presence is associated with greater trust, development of reciprocity, and face-to-face communication. Without trust and reciprocity, sustained collective action is not possible – whether on the commons or in other settings. Communication, even when it occurs only in the form of cheap talk, increases the likelihood of collective action. One might even say that communication through gestures, language, and writing is a basic feature of being human and existing socially (Newell and Simon, 1972). Araral’s paper (2014) attempts to reassess the contributions of Ostrom to the study of common as also those of a large number of other commons researchers. Based on a review of the different aspects of these writings, he directs attention to three different ‘‘generations’’ in the research on commons. According to him, the first focused on market/privatization and state/regulation as the solution to the problem of overexploitation of collectively owned resources; the second sought to identify the conditions under which collectively owned resources are successfully managed, and the third is currently in the process of emerging, with a set of research questions he identifies as being of fundamental importance. These research questions cover a range of issues: can Ostrom’s arguments be extended to larger-scale commons (Keohane and Ostrom, 1994)? To what extent are the design principles generalizable beyond her cases (Agrawal, 2001; Cox et al., 2010)? Are well-managed commons not an instance of privatization of renewable resources (McKean, 2000)? Can privatization and incorporation of private incentives to act environmentally responsibly be an effective solution to the problem of overused commons (Anderson and Leal, 1991; Cashore, 2002)? These and other important questions have been a staple of work on the commons and on renewable resource governance, but addressing them better will require methodological innovation, better data, and indeed, greater theoretical sophistication – themes to which this conclusion will return. Lejano and de Castro (2014) may be viewed as confirming some of Ostrom’s insights at a general level in their focus on
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the role of other-regarding motivations (Frey and Jegen, 2001) for collective action. Ostrom did not view a purely selfinterested, utility-maximizing, rational individual as the source of decisions and actions on the commons even if she conceded that such a construct could at times be analytically useful. But Lejano and de Castro take a step further through their consideration of what they call ‘‘non-utilitrian ethics’’ (see also Kelman, 1981; MacIntyre and Carus, 1999). They suggest in their paper that there is a class of environmental problems for which it is necessary to supplement the motivations of individual with other-regarding concerns. Such concerns are evident in different social, network, or cultural settings. They use the case of recycling to apply a model of other-regarding behavior in which the payoffs to the individual are partly a function of contributions to the public good – in this case recycling. According to their analysis, it is only through a thorough-going incorporation of such concerns in everyday environmental actions that a more real-world model of individual action will be possible. They further observe that the nature of the choice-making individual is itself not fixed, but a consequence of the context in which individuals find themselves. Even as Araral and Lejano and Castro press for attention to some key areas of emphasis in thinking about origins of collective action on the commons, other contributions to this volume seek to analyze collective phenomena through ideas that both draw on Ostrom’s work and add to her work. Howlett and Giest (2014), apply the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 2005) to the formation of climate research networks. Although Ostrom did not write about networks, Howlett and Giest show that the key building blocks of her theory also provide an important analytical window on networks. Cooperative interactions among potential network members are necessary even for a network structure to emerge and be sustained, and – trust, reciprocity, and communication, facilitated by the design principles, lie at the roots of cooperative interactions. In addition, they emphasize entrepreneurship and leadership in both the creation and maintenance of networks. In emphasizing the role of entrepreneurs, their paper resonates with a long tradition of research on collective action and the commons – political entrepreneurs and leaders have been identified as one solution to the problem of collective action by scholars from Hardin (1982), Young (1991), and Baland and Platteau (1996) to Schneider et al. (2011) and Feiock and Carr (2001) more recently.
3.
Maintenance of collective action
Studies of the commons in the wake of Governing the Commons have sought to identify the range of causal factors that are associated with or contribute to positive institutional, resource-related, and livelihood outcomes. Although Ostrom identified her design principles as being most directly about long-term institutional sustainability, subsequent writings have tried also to decipher the association of these institutional and other biophysical, socio-economic, demographic, and various contextual factors with resource condition and economic benefits to users as well (Agrawal, 2001; Ostrom,
2007, 2009; Pagdee et al., 2006). These different contributions are less attentive to the distinction between origins vs. maintenance of collective action, instead compressing the different factors associated with origins and maintenance into a single set of ‘‘enabling conditions’’ or ‘‘core variables.’’ Several contributions to this special section focus more on what enables collective action in the real world of commons governance and management to persist and for the governance of the commons to be effective. Both Araral (2014, discussed above) and Andersson et al. (2014) are examples. Andersson et al. build on a substantial body of work on monitoring, enforcement, and compliance to emphasize how institutions for rule-making and sanctioning rule-breakers are also critical to local commons governance. Indeed, one might suggest that rule making for resources, monitoring of users, sanctioning violators, and adjudicating disputes are connected, successive features of institutional arrangements for managing natural resources, and the lack of one of these features may threaten the effectiveness of others in reducing overuse. Their intervention and findings, based on data from 200 municipalities in Bolivia, is a useful corrective to the focus on monitoring that characterizes a number of recent studies of the commons (cf. Persha et al., 2011). Gruby and Basurto (2014) undertake a much needed investigation of the parallels and differences between writings on the commons and other subdisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields of social science scholarship on environmental processes and outcomes. The study of commons draws its theoretical inspiration from nearly all the social science disciplines: among them, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, and History. Each of these disciplines is also affiliated with environmental researchoriented subdisciplines, e.g. environmental economics, environmental politics, ecological economics, historical ecology, human geography, environmental anthropology. In addition, fields such as resilience science, feminist environmentalism, and political ecology have their own genealogies and interconnections with the different sciences. The Gruby and Basurto paper begins a conversation with one of these subfields of writings on the environment and natural resources – human geography, and in particular, constructivist approaches to the study of the environment. Using the idea of polycentric governance as their lodestone, their case study of marine conservation in the Republic of Palau highlights how declines in autonomy to make rules and manage resources may be associated with tendencies toward centralization as also a decline in the effectiveness of resource governance arrangements. The papers by Mansbridge (2014) and Lee et al. (2014) are also interested in how extra-local governance structures work, but they examine different aspects of such governance. Mansbridge focuses on the state, whereas Lee et al. assess the role of boundary organizations. Mansbridge analyzes how nested governance of common-pool resources in polycentric systems needs more insistent attention than it has received by scholars of the commons. Indeed, Ostrom’s research contributions have often been criticized for a lack of attention to the state and its structuring role in all contemporary resource governance. Mansbridge’s elaboration of the four different roles state agencies play – provide an arena for negotiations,
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information provision, threat of sanctions, and support of monitoring – is thus a welcome enhancement to the existing conceptual work on the commons. Taking a somewhat different optic, Lee et al. analyze how boundary organizations such as the Risø Center, an international research center on energy, climate change and sustainable development, can work to reduce the costs of collective action. By reducing the costs of communication and providing a forum for dialog and interactions, recalling both the role of political entrepreneurs and the information provision role of state agencies, boundary organizations are critical agents in enabling collective action for the provision of collective goods.
4.
Looking ahead
Although research on the commons is one of the more successful research programs in the social and environmental sciences, the contributions to this volume attest to the substantial progress that remains. For too long, scholars of the commons have not differentiated clearly between the different measures and dimensions of the commons outcomes in which they are interested, often remaining satisfied with relatively vague terms such as sustainability of the commons, long-term viability of the commons, or conditions of the commons. At other times, they have taken positive associations between some hypothesized causal factor and an outcome to stand for a similar association between that causal factor and other outcome dimensions (Agrawal and Benson, 2011). ‘‘Successful institutions’’ is not the same as ‘‘sustainably managed resources’’ is not the same as ‘‘biodiverse resource systems’’ is not the same as ‘‘sustainability of commons dependent livelihoods’’ – whatever the concrete measure of each of these outcome concepts. Forest, fishery, irrigation, and pastoral commons are sub-species of coupled natural and human systems. It is insufficient to say at this point in the evolution of research on the commons that some causal factor of interest – whether it is small group size or local enforcement or graduate sanctions or some other factor – is positively or negatively associated with commons outcomes. Commons outcomes are diverse, and attending to this diversity is critical if future research on the common is to move beyond its current preoccupations. If it is necessary to distinguish between the many different outcomes of the governance of common-pool resource systems – among them, livelihoods benefits from the resource, equity in the distribution of benefits, diversity of biological systems, and long-term sustainability of the resource system – and that these outcomes may not be tightly correlated, then the task facing scholars of commons is only starting. But it is a task for which scholars of commons start with a tremendous advantage compared to those studying most other coupled natural and human systems – few other fields have such a well-developed framework from which to begin. Indeed, Ostrom’s insights form an enormously valuable starting point to think about the theoretical relationships that explain how specific causal processes may lead to specific outcomes, when one should expect multiple positive outcomes to occur together, and when one should expect there to be tradeoffs between achieving different outcomes. This is a stupendous
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task. But it is also one that is extraordinarily exciting. The study of coupled natural and human systems is for the most part in its infancy. Scholars of environmental processes are at the dawn of discovering the relationships and drivers of the many outcomes in the different subsystems that constitute the coupled natural and human systems. Doing so will require a methodological transformation in the study of the commons. In outlining some of the gaps in case and comparative case-oriented approaches to the study of commons, Agrawal (2001) and Agrawal and Chhatre (2006) called for a more targeted use of quantitative and statistical analyses. Recent years have also seen the use of simulation method and the application of complexity science inspired techniques to the analyses of commons dilemmas (Agrawal et al., 2013; Janssen and Ostrom, 2006). But the quantitative estimation of the causal effects of policy interventions, demographic shifts, and institutional changes on environmental outcomes has now become more methodologically sophisticated than the regression analyses still used by many commons scholars (Andam et al., 2008, 2010; Ferraro et al., 2011). Scholars of decentralization, governance, protected areas, and institutional arrangements in the fields of development (Chattopadhyay and Duflo, 2004; Duflo et al., 2007) and even those interested in explaining deforestation have begun to use experimental techniques and rigorous statistical matching-based approaches to infer causal relationships more rigorously than is possible only by relying on regression analyses. The point is not that regression and multi-factorial associational analyses are not useful – they certainly are. And when only observational data is possible, as is the case for many areas of research on the commons, there is no getting around careful multivariate analyses of such data. But even in such situations, if sufficient information is available, more careful analyses may be possible. Combining existing data analysis approaches with new methods that allow for more rigorous hypothesis testing will become more critical with time. The use of new methods to understand cause-outcome relationships more reliably will thus also require a data revolution. Substantial amounts of new data, integration of locally specific data on the commons with publicly available global datasets on land change, climate, demography, topography, and marine biophysical features, and the hierarchical organization of datasets is likely to be an important next step in the ongoing evolution of research on the commons. To highlight the many different empirical and conceptual steps that can establish the study of the commons on a more rigorous scientific footing is not to ignore the obvious necessity of a more historical, reflective, critical outlook on the relationship between the governance of common pool resources and the needs of the marginal, poor, often disadvantaged populations that depend on them (Cochran and Ray, 2009; Wagner and Talakai, 2007). Scholars of commons have been criticized in the past for being insufficiently attentive to questions of power, politics, and inequality (Goldman, 1997). Effective governance of the commons for long-term sustainability, maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in common pool resources is not necessarily synonymous with equitable allocation of benefits. This is precisely why a more differentiated analysis of
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outcomes is necessary. And if decisions to enhance sustainability of commons and common governance occur at the expense of equity in allocation of benefits or lead to the marginalization of indigenous peoples or women, the need for such choices must be spelt out clearly instead of being based on a sweeping assumption that sustainable governance is also equitable governance. The conceptual, methodological, and data revolutions necessary in the years ahead are no doubt daunting. But the prize is equally attractive: a theoretically grounded, solid, comprehensive, and differentiated understanding of how specific causal factors influence different outcomes related to common-pool resource systems. It is worth striving toward this prize.
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