Produced Common Pool Resources, Collective Action and Sustainable Local Developement: The Case of Food-Processing Clusters

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2004

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Abstract

"The theory of Common Pool Resources (CPR) deals mainly with natural resources even if some scholars of this current, such as Ostrom (1998), underline the fact that their analysis could apply to man-made CPR. "These scholars criticize the pessimism of the early contributions on the issue of collective action and common resources, such as Olson (1965) and Buchanan on clubs (1965). However, the literature on CPR emphasizes the role of group size and homogeneity in the efficiency or CPR management institutional devices. Moreover these early contributions did not focus on natural resources but on resources which could be the product of an human action, such as lobbying. "The importance of man-made, or produced, common resources should not be minimized, even when the focus is on natural resources and environmental issues. CPR management often has a local character, because natural resources are locally defined. But they can be linked to the production of local common resources, and also of private goods: this is what the concept of multifunctionnality is all about. "This paper scrutinize the management of man-made or 'produced' CPR, first in general an then by taking as a showcase the development in many rural areas of Latin America of local systems of activies geared towards the production of 'traditional' food products and related activies. In this case 'quality signals' can be considered as produced CPR."

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IASC, common pool resources, food policy, rural affairs, efficiency, productivity, consumption, collective action

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