Matching the degree of privateness/collectiveness to the scale of resource use

Abstract

This research contributes to the debate on the role of property rights in land and resource management. Its premise is that group/shared/collective ownership structures, such as partnerships, collective companies, corporations, associations, communities, and families are pervasive in the economy and in social life. According to Buchanan’s theory of clubs, these structures cover “a whole spectrum of ownership-consumption (1965, p.1) possibilities” between the two extreme forms – purely private and purely public. The paper’s main contribution is that it defines the degree of privateness/publicness as a fundamental feature of shared/group institutions and organisations. The main function of the degree of privateness/publicness is to allow people to achieve a scale of ownership as close as possible to the optimal scale of use of resources for various economic and social activities. The thesis of the paper is that spatial and urban development is a series of institutional transformations, driven by the need to establish a scale of ownership of resources that corresponds to the optimal scale of their use. To test this finding, the paper compares the changes in the degree of privateness/publicness and the scale of land ownership in the three largest Bulgarian Black Sea resorts during the post-socialist period of privatisation. It draws on the above-described theory to explain the disparate and controversial results in these resorts. Finally, it suggests implications for land use management.