4. Elinor Ostrom and the concept of ‘commons’

Question 1

What are the ‘commons’? (EXAM QUESTION)

Answer 1

• According to Ostrom (1999), the commons are natural and human-constructed natural resources or goods that are open access (highly difficult to exclude others from using it) and are easy to have rivalry/subtractability over others that want to use this resource.
• According to Dell’Angelo, commons are common-pool resources that are governed by common property regimes.

Question 2

Please provide an example of a natural resource system that can be considered a ‘common’

Answer 2

• Clean air in atmosphere: it is hard to restrict since it is everywhere. One person can decode to pollute it and put costs on others who didn’t pollute but we need to breathe the air nonetheless.
• Fish stock
• Water in Aral Sea

Question 3

Why is air a public good and not a common pool resource?

Answer 3

Because it is hard to exclude others from air and it has low substractability, meaning if one breathes it, there is still air left for another person.

Question 4

What was Hardin’s mistake?

Answer 4

Hardin’s mistake was that he assumed that common goods are always Open Access when he wrote The Tragedy of the Commons, and did not think of common property regimes.

Question 5

What is the difference between common-pool resources and common property regimes?

Answer 5

Ostrom, et al. (1999) described common-pool resources (CPRs) as natural and human-constructed resources in which: exclusion of beneficiaries through physical and institutional means is especially costly (difficulty of exclusion), and exploitation by one user reduces resource availability for others (subtractability). Common property regimes are an institutional category.

Question 6

What is the tragedy of the commons? Provide an example.

Answer 6

The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource (also called a common) act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource.

An example of such a tragedy is overfishing.

Question 7

What is the main point made by Ostrom, et al (1999)?

Answer 7

Ostrom et al. admit that Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons is real, but not inevitable. People have organized for thousands of years to manage common-pool resources in the form of common property regimes. There are however, many challenges involved with CPR, such as the large scale of some commons, cultural diversity of users and globalization.

Question 8

What is Agrawal’s (2001) main point?

Answer 8

Agrawal analyses three influential works about common property institutions. His conclusion is that the Ostrom design principle is an essential condition that helps to account for the success of institutions in sustaining CPRs. The following characteristics are important to the local self-management of CPR: resources, groups, institutional arrangements, relation with the environment.

Question 9

What are Hardin’s solutions for a tragedy of the commons?

Answer 9

1. Privatization, because if you privatize a public resource, you can exclude others
2. Government control

Question 10

Provide an example that evidences the influence of Hardin’s paper.

Answer 10

• The tragedy of the commons influenced the World Bank, which made sure that “problematic” commons in the South were privatized.

Question 11

What are the four property regimes?

Answer 11

Ostrom (2009) makes a distinction between four different property regimes and these are linked to their own types of goods

1. Private control (private goods, club goods, public goods, or common pool resources)
2. State control (private goods, club goods, or common pool resources)
3. Common Property Regimes (common pool resources)
4. Open access (public goods or common pool resources)

Question 12

Describe a situation when conflict can happen over the governance of a good.

Answer 12

When there is an overlap of property regimes.