unit 3 part 4 Flashcards
Governance
- Processes through which decision rules are made (e.g.
policies, norms, laws) - Who is involved?
- State actors
- Non-state actors (e.g. NGOs, businesses, communities
what are the commons
- Common-pool resources (CPR)
- A valued natural or human-made resource or facility
that is available to more than one person and
subject to degradation as a result of overuse
characteristic of the commons
- non-excludable:Controlling access by potential users is very costly
difficult or virtually impossible - rival(subtractable):Exploitation by one user reduces the quantity or quality available for other users
example of commons
- the ocean(hard to control acess)
- biodiversity
- forests
what is the tragedy of the commons ?
when individuals,acting independly and rationally(maximize economic interests),will deplate a shared resource,even when doing so is not in their long-term interest
ex:i have to or someone else will
key ideas
- benefit is individual
- cost will be collective
- incentives to maximize individual benefit
- free-riders
-Individuals that overuse the resource without concern for others
-Little to no contribution for maintaining the commons
example
-blue fish
collepsed in the 90’s
-fishermen maximized their profit
the tragedy
is that the incetive is to overconsume because the cost will be to high otherwize or just for an individual benefit
what assumptions the author had
- All individuals are selfish, norm-free and maximize short term returns
- Absence of organization and lack of cooperation amongst users
- No rules or norms regulate the commons
- Privatization (i.e. private property) or centralized government (i.e. state property are the only
solutions for avoiding the tragedy
Re-examining the Tragedy
- Individuals do not always act in selfish and short-sighted ways
- Types of users:
-Self-interested
-Unwilling to cooperate unless they are
assured they will not be exploited
-Willing to cooperate hoping others do the same
-Genuine altruists
Re-examining the Tragedy
- Hardin’s theory works when no ownership exists
- More solutions exist than those advocated by Hardin
- Property rights regimes
-Open access
-Private property
-State property
-Communal property*-something he forgot/ignored
open access
- Absence of well-defined
property rights - Access is unregulated and
open to everyone
ex:ocean
PRIVATE PROPERTY
- Regulation of resource use is
vested on an individual or firm - Right to exclude others from
using the resource
STATE PROPERTY
- Rights exclusively vested in
government - Government regulates
access and use
COMMUNITY
- Rights held by an identifiable
community of users - Use by community members is
regulated - Right to exclude outsiders
does it leaves a good outcome?
- open acess: no because it makes easier to others to abuse it
- individual property: it could but it depends on the individual
- Government property:it could but it depends of the goverment
- communal property: it can be but can benefits some but not the ones outside of the community
any regime is likely to perform better than an open access regime, anyth
Ostrom’s rebuttal to Hardin
- Assumptions are valid, but not generalizable
- Hardin = open access regime
- Humans are norm-using and learn from mistakes
- Rules can change the commons dilemma
- Empirical evidence against the tragedy
- Hundreds of cases: water & irrigation; forests; fisheries
-Local resource users can create norms for managing
the commons
key points
- The tragedy occurs when ‘independent’ and ‘rational‘
individuals deplete a shared resource, even when doing
so is not in their long-term interest. - “[…] tragedies of the commons are real, but not
inevitable” - Hardin’s ideas assume lack of cooperation and local norms
- Hardin sees privatization or state property as the solutions for the tragedy, ignoring community property
