How Types of Goods and Property Rights Jointly Affect Collective Action

Elinor Ostrom B

617 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Theoretical Politics

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Economic Theory and Institutions Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies Economic Policies and Impacts

Abstract

The study of collective action has matured dramatically since Mancur Olson challenged scholars by positing a general theory in his pathbreaking book on The Logic of Collective Action (1965). Olson's theoretical predictions related to the incapacity of individuals, except under limited conditions, to solve on their own what are now known as `collective action problems'. Olson argued that one characteristic of goods - that of exclusion - defined all public goods. In contemporary analysis, the problem of achieving exclusion of noncontributors has come instead to characterize all types of collective action problems. Multiple subtypes of collective action problems have been identified. One major class of collective action problems are referred to in contemporary literature as public goods. Another class are referred to as common-pool resources. Common-pool resources are characterized by difficulty of exclusion and subtractability of resource units and are threatened by overuse leading to congestion or even destruction of the resource. Such threats do not apply to public goods. Diverse production and allocation functions generate further important differences in behavior and outcomes. Scholars have also begun to recognize multiple types of property right bundles that distinguish among authorized entrants, users and claimants, proprietors and full owners. Empirical studies show that groups of individuals who possess at least the rights of proprietorship are able to govern and manage their systems more effectively than presumed in the earlier theoretical literature. The article ends with an analysis of the factors that may be conducive to the organization of a common-property regime as contrasted to a private-property regime.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 617 citations exist upstream.

References

1990Governing the Commons 1965The Logic of Collective Action 1954The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure 1994Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources 1974Toward a Theory of Property Rights 1992Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis 1990The Tragedy of the Commons: Twenty-two years later 1988Group Size Effects in Public Goods Provision: The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism

Cited by

2007Private and Common Property Rights 2019Food sharing, redistribution, and waste reduction via mobile applications: A social network analysis 2020Communicating sentiment and outlook reverses inaction against collective risks 2010Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation 2015Heritage tourism and livelihood sustainability of a resettled rural community: Mount Sanqingshan World Heritage Site, China 2020Distributed energy systems as common goods: Socio-political acceptance of renewables in intelligent microgrids

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.