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Conference Paper Comparing Forest Commons in Norway and Sweden Part I: What is to be Compared(1996) Berge, Erling"The paper will outline the history and legal foundation of a property rights regime to natural resources in Norway called 'Bygde Commons.' It will be contrasted with a different system of 'State Commons' and with the system in Sweden."Journal Article Dynamics of the Climate Dilemma(2024) Berge, Erling"Despite a growing focus on climate change from governments around the world, carbon emissions continue to rise. To understand why little progress has been made, we must first conceptualise the problem and its core elements. For example, what dynamics of trust and cooperation shape human attempts to combat climate change? How does climate change represent a social dilemma? And how have social dilemmas been resolved in other areas? Dr Erling Berge, professor emeritus at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, responds to these questions using policy examples from Norway’s rich history. He is shedding new light on past failures and future possibilities for tackling this pivotal threat to life on this planet."Conference Paper The Structure of Households in Scandinavia Since 1950(1985) Berge, Erling; Bugge, Liv Susanne"The paper investigates the changing structure of households according to number of persons, number of children and sex and age of head-person. Definitions and their changes are discussed. Mean number of persons per household has decreased from about 3 in 1950 to about 2.5 in 1980. The proportion of one-person households has increased from about 20% to about 30%. The proportion of households with children has decreased from about one half to about one third of the households. The proportion of households headed by a woman has increased from about 20% to about 30%."Conference Paper Reflections on Property Rights and Commons in Economies of Western Europe(2002) Berge, ErlingFrom page 1: "My basic message is that commons, both as a concept and as a reality, is alive and well also in developed capitalist economies. In fact, without a sophisticated use of the particulars of institutions developed to govern the commons of Western Europe, the ability to govern the development of modern capitalist economies would be seriously hampered. And the urban way of life creates a demand for new types of commons. To me it seems that the more sophisticated capitalism becomes, the more sophisticated do institutions governing various types of commons become."Conference Paper Principles of Institutional Design and the Management of Norwegian Nature(2000) Berge, Erling"The paper reviews some of the legislation relevant for the management of Norwegian nature to see if design principles suggested by Goodin can be recognized. Goodin's suggestions for the design of a 'good' institution are: --revisability - institutions ought to be revised as experiences with their working accumulate; --robustness - institutions should be able to adapt easily to 'appropriate' social change while resisting 'inappropriate;' --sensitivity - institutions should respond to motivational complexity among the relevant actors; --publicity - all institutional 'actions' should in principle be publicly known without thereby frustrating their purpose; --variation - the institutions ought to allow or even encourage variation/adaptation to local conditions. "The findings are that Norwegian legislation is fairly easily revisable and it has a lot of variation. The publicity principle has a weak legal standing. Robustness is difficult to gauge, but the intertwining of different acts and the long complex process of any major change of the law may represent some safeguards. The sensitivity of an institution is not only a function of the formal rules but also of their application. More centralised decision-making will tend to make the sensitivity to local actors and local conditions more difficult. There seems to be a systematic difference in centralisation of decision-making between the urban industrial concerns with nature and the rural- agricultural concerns."Journal Article The Way We Think(2004) Berge, Erling"IASCP has completed its first conference in Latin America. It is the tenth general conference of our association. Incidentally it is also 15 years since the association was founded. As associations go we are fairly young. But among the young anniversaries are important. One way of using them is to think a bit about where we came from, where we are, and where we want to go. We may even wonder if there is a discrepancy between where we want to go and where we are heading. You may want to think about that. Here I want to think about who we are or maybe rather who we think we are. The collective expression of what we think we should be doing is found in our mission statement."Working Paper Common Property Rights Regimes in Norway and Sweden(1997) Berge, Erling"The present paper will use the categories developed in the English law of property to give a detailed and precise description of the property rights regimes governing the resource utilisation in the various cases of common property in timber land."Journal Article Our Association Is ...(2007) Berge, Erling; Prakash, Sanjeev"IASC is a remarkable association in many ways. Pioneering a new area of cross-disciplinary research, it has deliberated over and realigned its mandate better to serve its core interests and goals. It continues to organise some memorable international and regional conferences. It has consistently broadened and diversified its membership base. And, in the process, it has probably helped to nurture a new breed of young professionals. Speaking on a personal level, few other associational gatherings of between 500-1,000 participants so effectively reproduce the informal intimacy of small groups--which can be both refreshing and conducive to discussion and sharing between persons of diverse backgrounds, cultures and interests--as do the biannual meetings of the IASC."Journal Article Editorial: 'Governing the Commons' for Two Decades: A Complex Story(2011) Berge, Erling; van Laerhoven, Frank"In complex systems, the elements are interrelated in ways that ensure that one element cannot be studied without accounting for the others. We take as a fact that the world over time has become more and more complex. The story of Elinor Ostroms Governing the Commons is among other things a story with a protagonist role for complexity. It is also a tale of the emergence and development of a complex of diverse but interrelated disciplines, and subsequently, angles, perspectives, methods, themes, insights, and lessons-learned. In the fall of 2008, it was 40 years since Hardin (1968) created a new research field by expounding his ideas about the commons. At one of our editorial meetings (6-7 November 2008) we realized that in a short while it would be 20 years since Elinor Ostrom (1990) transformed this same research field. We felt it would behoove our journal to take a closer look at what had followed from this publication. As we finalized our list of invitations and a letter explaining our intent, the news broke that Lin had been awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2009, sharing it with Oliver E. Williamson. What better reason can we give for what follows."Conference Paper Environmental Protection in the Theory of Commons(2003) Berge, Erling"The modern and largely academic and urban initiated concern with environmental protection of landscapes, species, watersheds, biodiversity, ecosystem-services etc. are framed by a language suggesting that the main concern is the protection and preservation of precarious resources of common interests for mankind. "Thus the values deserving the attention of environmental protection seem to be very different from the concerns shaping the evolution of traditional commons: the control of access to and extraction of resources seen as limited but essential for the survival of local communities. "The paper will explore the theoretical differences and similarities of the two types of interests driving the concern for preserving values. It will be suggested that a basic difference lies in the distinction between values where there is rivalry in appropriation and values where there is non-rivalry. It will further be argued that in designing new institutions for managing protected areas, an understanding of traditional commons and how the new values to be protected are different from and interact with the old values will be important to achieve sustainability of resource use within the protected areas."