Common Property, Collective Action and Community

In: Journal of theoretical politics, Band 4, Heft 3, S. 309-324

Abstract

We are interested in explaining why some groups of users of common property are able to resolve their collective action problems by themselves and others not. Our argument is that a group possesses the capacities for a wholly endogenous solution to the degree that it approximates a community of mutually vulnerable actors. For an initial test, we reanalyze the cases studied by Elinor Ostrom in her recent book, Governing the Commons (Ostrom, 1990), in which the central role of community is (we believe) obscured.