Against the Wind: On Reintroducing Commons Law in Northern Norway

Abstract

Since the Age of Enlightenment, modernization has taken the form of a parallel growth of the significance of both the state and the individual, at the expense of the intermediary or secondary groups or collectives of various kinds. With a modern notion of over-burdening and high transaction costs of the mature state and a disrupting alienation of the individual, the search for institutional solutions that are neither market, nor state, has intensified in both academia and bureaucracies. However, such efforts often clash with many of the values of modern Western society. In Northern Norway, the political struggle over the reintro- duction of Commons Law for Mountain Areas revealed some of these contradictions. This example also shows why many sub- optimal solutions in modern resource management are favored because of the value attached to individual freedom and equal treatment by the state; even when these contradict the sustainable governing of a resource. In contrast, institutional designs based on smaller collectives are perceived as less attractive because they involve less individual freedom, more duties and more inequality. The lessons are used for a discussion of the role of common property institutions in the process of modernisation.