Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/108210.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fifty Years of Debate on Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons – A Reflection

Author

Listed:
  • Hasan, Lubna
Abstract
This paper critically reviews Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons”. Hardin’s thesis about the impossibility of collective action for achieving mutually beneficial outcomes in a group setting has divided the scholarly community since its publication in 1968, while its most perennial object being the communal management of resources, which was banned on account of being inherently inefficient. This paper argues that much of the criticism against common property regimes stems from incorrect modeling of a common property situation, and misunderstandings about the terms and their wrong usage. Specifically, models of collective action - in particular, Hardin’s tragedy of the Commons, but also Olson’s Logic of Collective Action, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is used as a critique against common property regimes, are not based on an accurate depiction of reality and many of their assumptions are untrue. The purpose is to drive home the point that common property regimes are not inherently inferior types of regimes; and causes of success, and of failures, of these regimes lie elsewhere. Secondly, both public [and also private] management of natural resources has not had universal success. It is time to think out of the usual ‘either public or private’ dichotomy. Combining elements of both public and communal management in a pragmatic way is necessary. It is time to give co-management a serious thought.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasan, Lubna, 2020. "Fifty Years of Debate on Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons – A Reflection," MPRA Paper 108210, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:108210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/108210/1/MPRA_paper_108210.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Soofia Mumtaz & Durr-E-Nayab, 1991. "Management Arrangements of the Chaprote Forest and their Implications for Sustainable Development," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 1075-1086.
    2. Lubna Hasan, 2001. "Analysing Institutional Set-up of Forest Management in Pakistan," PIDE Research Report 2001:182, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    3. Lubna Hasan, 2007. "An Anatomy of State Failures in Forest Management in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 1189-1203.
    4. Elinor Ostrom & Roy Gardner, 1993. "Coping with Asymmetries in the Commons: Self-Governing Irrigation Systems Can Work," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 93-112, Fall.
    5. Daniel W. Bromley & Devendra P. Chapagain, 1984. "The Village Against the Center: Resource Depletion in South Asia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 66(5), pages 868-873.
    6. Azhar, Rauf A, 1993. "Commons, Regulation, and Rent-Seeking Behavior: The Dilemma of Pakistan's Guzara Forests," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 115-129, October.
    7. Carlisle Ford Runge, 1981. "Common Property Externalities: Isolation, Assurance, and Resource Depletion in a Traditional Grazing Context," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 63(4), pages 595-606.
    8. Wade, Robert, 1987. "The Management of Common Property Resources: Collective Action as an Alternative to Privatisation or State Regulation," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 11(2), pages 95-106, June.
    9. Jodha, N.S., 1992. "Common Property Resources; A Missing Dimension of development Strategies," World Bank - Discussion Papers 168, World Bank.
    10. Soofia Mumtaz & Durr-e-Nayab, 1992. "The Rationale of Common Property in the Development Context," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 259-286.
    11. Bromley, D.W. & Cernea, M.M., 1989. "The Management Of Common Property Natural Resources - Some Conceptual And Operational Fallacies," World Bank - Discussion Papers 57, World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hasan, Lubna, 2002. "Revisiting Commons – Are Common Property Regimes Irrational?," MPRA Paper 8316, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Hasan, Lubna, 2001. "Analysing Institutional Set-up of Forest Management in Pakistan," MPRA Paper 7343, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Anderson White, T. & Ford Runge, C., 1995. "The emergence and evolution of collective action: Lessons from watershed management in Haiti," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(10), pages 1683-1698, October.
    4. Margaret A. McKean, 1992. "Success on the Commons," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(3), pages 247-281, July.
    5. Baland, Jean-Marie & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 2003. "Economics of common property management regimes," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 127-190, Elsevier.
    6. Hasan, Lubna Hasan, 2001. "Forest Management," MPRA Paper 6457, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Lise, Wietze, 2000. "Factors influencing people's participation in forest management in India," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 379-392, September.
    8. Carlisle Ford Runge, 1985. "The Innovation of Rules and the Structure of Incentives in Open Access Resources," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 67(2), pages 368-372.
    9. Randhir, Timothy O. & Lee, John G., 1996. "Managing local commons in developing economies: an institutional approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 1-12, January.
    10. Lubna Hasan, 2007. "An Anatomy of State Failures in Forest Management in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 1189-1203.
    11. Harry W. Blair, 1996. "Democracy, Equity and Common Property Resource Management in the Indian Subcontinent," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 27(3), pages 475-499, July.
    12. Dessalegn, Mengistu & Merrey, D. J., 2014. "Is ‘Social Cooperation’ for traditional irrigation, while ‘Technology’ is for motor pump irrigation?," IWMI Reports 201004, International Water Management Institute.
    13. Dujon, Veronica, 1997. "Communal property and land markets: Agricultural development policy in St. Lucia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 25(9), pages 1529-1540, September.
    14. Gary D. Thompson & Paul N. Wilson, 1994. "Common Property As An Institutional Response To Environmental Variability," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 12(3), pages 10-21, July.
    15. Yoder, Jonathan K., 2000. "Contracting Over Common Property: Cost-Share Contracts For Predator Control," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(2), pages 1-16, December.
    16. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    17. Edmonds, Eric V., 2002. "Government-initiated community resource management and local resource extraction from Nepal's forests," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 89-115, June.
    18. Ray, Isha & Williams, Jeffrey, 2002. "Locational asymmetry and the potential for cooperation on a canal," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 129-155, February.
    19. Tarui, Nori, 2004. "Common-Property Resource Use And Outside Options: Cooperation Across Generations In A Dynamic Game," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20029, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    20. Meed Mbidzo & Helen Newing & Jessica P. R. Thorn, 2021. "Can Nationally Prescribed Institutional Arrangements Enable Community-Based Conservation? An Analysis of Conservancies and Community Forests in the Zambezi Region of Namibia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-18, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Natural Resource Management; Property Institutions; Co-management of Resources.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P14 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Property Rights
    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:108210. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.