The management of common property resources: collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation

Abstract

Can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources? Many writers on collective action and common property are sweepingly pessimistic about the ability of the people who face problems of common property to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves. This paper shows, with reference to Prisoners Dilemma, Garett Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons', and Mancur Olson's 'logic of collective action', that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak in many situations of village-based common property resource use. There can thus be no general presumption that the collective action route to common property resource management will fail, any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work. The paper suggests a number of general factors to do with the characteristics of the resources, the user group, and group state relations, on which chances of success depend.