Common Property Theory

Tragedy of the Commons

The concept of “free-riding” is central to the Tragedy of the Commons formulation. “Free-riders” are resource users who shirk the work and responsibilities of contributing to resource management. For example, free-riders can eschew such work of investing in an irrigation system, but still enjoy the benefits of water delivery. When a person cannot be excluded from benefits that others provide, there is little motivation to contribute to joint efforts. If everybody decides to free-ride, however, there are no benefits from sound resource management. The free-riding problem makes voluntary contributions to a public good (such as common property maintenance) illogical; solutions require outside coercion. According to this early formulation of common property theory, only privatization or state control could resolve this dilemma. Either the resource must be allocated to individual owners who will suffer their own consequences if they overstock, or else the state must impose rules to restrain the effects of individual rationality.

One way to summarize the Tragedy of the Commons view is the adage that “everybody's property is nobody's property.” For many, this formulation remains the Commons problem, in spite of a great deal of work documenting successful common property management regimes. Such ideas continue to have great cultural resonance in Western thinking. On the one hand, private property evokes the “invisible hand” of the market that guides individually selfish actions toward the greatest social good. On the other, lack of private property leads to brutish chaos and disorder.

Current common property theorists identify several conceptual errors in the Tragedy of the Commons [Page 318]formulation. Common property is not everybody's property. Instead, common property is one of several different ways to organize ownership of common pool resources—a class of resources for which it is difficult to exclude people and for which use involves the ability of subtraction. A fishery is a clear example of a common pool resource; it is difficult to keep fishers out, and when a fisher makes a catch, it is no longer available for other fishers.

There are four basic property regimes for such resources. Under open access, there is no exclusion and no rules governing individual use. Under private property, the resource is parceled out to individuals. Under state property, the state retains ownership and regulates the resources. Under communal property, which is often referred to as “common property,” an identifiable community of resource users is able to exclude other users and subject the resource to customs and rules. It is a misunderstanding to conflate “the commons” or “common property” with open access. Tragedy of the Commons only portrays a very small subset of common pool resource ownership arrangements.

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