Governance Anomalies and the Logic of the Commons: Epistemological Clarifications and Implications for Praxis

Abstract

"This paper draws on a book manuscript in draft—Science of the Commons: An Epistemological Inquiry—to address governance anomalies that have accrued in the course of commons research. Building on my work with the NAS Panel on Common Property Resources (1983-86), I propose revisions in the taxonomic concept of the commons—modifying its defining attributes. I show that the concept-in-use, defined by subtractability (of resource units) and difficulties of exclusion (from the resource system), is a less-than-good fit for plainly relevant cases. Redefining both attributes, I arrive at a modified conception: an indivisible resource system producing divisible goods that are necessary participants in the system’s productive process, but also are appropriable by multiple independent users entitled to access. These defining conditions also comprise the necessary conditions for Hardin’s 'tragedy of the commons,' tying the taxonomic concept logically to a specified problematic situation. Lin Ostrom’s 'design principles' can then be reformulated to supply the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for transforming such a situation. Ergo, the 'logic of the situation' (in Popper’s sense) combines social approval of individual use with social disapproval of unsustainable use, providing the normative parameters for rules-based governance in a growing and ever more diverse set of cases."