Success on the Commons: A Comparative Examination of Institutions for Common Property Resources Management

Abstract

"The history of common rights in land and water--how these systems evolve, function, and disappear--is an excellent source of enlightenment for those who like me worry about the problems of collective goods. Although I am an amateur adventurer and interloper with regard to both Japans' history and the comparative history of common property systems, I would like to offer a primitive and premature list of observations on both topics. I will begin with a short summary of the management practices used in the 19th and 20th centuries in one very well studied expanse of Japan's common land--the north slope of Mount Fuji, about which I have written previously. I will then compare the essential features of these practices to those found in other systems of common property management in England, Switzerland, Morocco, Nepal, India, and the Andean highlands."