The Conditions for Successful Collective Action Regarding Common Pool Resources: Examples and Implications for Global Cooperation

Abstract

"The purpose of this paper is to summarize some of the bargaining issues involved in collective action to address local common-pool problems and to illustrate them in three empirical cases. The importance of riming or the sequence of coalition building and the heterogeneity of the participant's preferences, information, and stakes in the problem are emphasized. Two of the empirical cases involve traditional common-pool problems and efforts to resolve them in fisheries and oil fields, and the third involves collective action with government assistance to control orange shipments to fix prices. As described below, collective action to resolve rent dissipation from technological externalities in common-pool resources is similar to that required for reducing the losses from pecuniary externalities."