Routledge handbook of the study of the commons

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF THE STUDY
OF THE COMMONS

The “commons” has come to mean many things to many people, and the term is often
used inconsistently. The study of the commons has expanded dramatically since Garrett
Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons (1968) popularized the dilemma faced by users of
common pool resources.
This comprehensive Handbook serves as a unique synthesis and resource for understanding
how analytical frameworks developed within the literature assist in understanding the nature
and management of commons resources. Such frameworks include those related to Institutional
Analysis and Development, Social-Ecological Systems, and Polycentricity, among others. The
book aggregates and analyses these frameworks to lay a foundation for exploring how they apply
according to scholars across a wide range of disciplines. It includes an exploration of the unique
problems arising in different disciplines of commons study, including natural resources (forests,
oceans, water, energy, ecosystems, etc.), economics, law, governance, the humanities, and intellectual property. It shows how the analytical frameworks discussed early in the book facilitate
interdisciplinarity within commons scholarship. This interdisciplinary approach within the context of analytical frameworks helps facilitate a more complete understanding of the similarities
and differences faced by commons resource users and managers, the usefulness of the commons
lens as an analytical tool for studying resource management problems, and the best mechanisms
by which to formulate policies aimed at addressing such problems.
Blake Hudson is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, Houston,
Texas, USA.
Jonathan Rosenbloom is a Professor of Law at Drake University Law School, Des Moines,
Iowa, USA.
Dan Cole is a Professor of Law at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, with a
joint appointment in the School of Law and in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.



ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF THE STUDY OF THE

COMMONS

Edited by Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom
and Dan Cole


First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2019 selection and editorial matter, Blake Hudson, Jonathan
Rosenbloom and Dan Cole; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom and Dan
Cole to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
With the exception of Chapter 26, no part of this book may
be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Chapter 26 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open
Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It
has been made available under a Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and

explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hudson, Blake, editor. | Rosenbloom, Jonathan D., editor.
| Cole, Daniel G. (Daniel Gerard), editor.
Title: Routledge handbook of the study of the commons / edited
by Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom and Dan Cole. Other
titles: Handbook of the study of the commons
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037489 (print) | LCCN 2018048086
(ebook) | ISBN 9781315162782 (eBook) | ISBN
9781138060906 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315162782 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Common heritage of mankind (International law)
| Global commons. | Commons.
Classification: LCC KZ1322 (ebook) | LCC KZ1322 .R68 2019
(print) | DDC 341—dc23
LC record available at />ISBN: 978-1-138-06090-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16278-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK


CONTENTS

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors

ix
xi
xii

  1 Introduction: commons analytical frameworks and case studies
Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom and Dan Cole

1

PART I

Theoretical frameworks and alternative lenses for
analyzing commons
  2 Bridging analytical frameworks and disciplines to
which they apply
Konrad Hagedorn, Philipp Grundmann and Andreas Thiel
  3 Using the Ostrom Workshop frameworks to study
the commons
Michael Cox

5
7

27

 4 Polycentricity
Josephine van Zeben

38

  5 Connecting commons and the IAD framework
Michael D. McGinnis

50

  6 Anticommons theory
Michael Heller

63

v


Contents

  7 Knowledge commons
Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann and Katherine J. Strandburg

76

  8 Commons storytelling: tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies
Brigham Daniels

91

  9 Common-pool resource appropriation and conservation:
lessons from experimental economics
Esther Blanco and James M. Walker
10 Humanistic rational choice: understanding the fundamental
motivations that drive self-organization and cooperation

in commons dilemmas
Daniel A. DeCaro
PART II

106

117

Commons interdisciplinary case studies

133

11 The US public lands as commons
Bruce Huber

135

12 Water commons: a critical appreciation and revisionist view
Eduardo Araral, Maitreyee Mukherjee, Faye Victoria Sit Ying Qi
and Serik Orazgaliyev

144

13 Commons analysis and ocean fisheries
Bonnie J. McCay

157

14 Coastal commons as social-ecological systems
Achim Schlüter, Stefan Partelow, Luz Elba Torres-Guevara

and Tim C. Jennerjahn

170

15 Climate as a commons
Jouni Paavola

188

16 Governing wildlife commons: wild boars, wolves,
and red kites
Christian Schleyer, Nina Hagemann and Katharina Rauchenecker
17 Ecosystem services as commons?
Tatiana Kluvankova, Stanislava Brnkalakova, Veronika Gezik
and Michal Maco

vi

198
208


Contents

18 Urban commons of the Global South: using multiple
frames to illuminate complexity
Seema Mundoli, Hita Unnikrishnan and Harini Nagendra

220

19 Ostrom in the city: design principles and practices for
the urban commons
Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione

235

20 Infrastructure and its governance: the British
Broadcasting Corporation case study
Brett Frischmann

256

21 Medical information commons
Mary Anderlik Majumder, Peter D. Zuk and Amy L. McGuire
22 Ethical standards for unconsented data access to build genomic
and other medical information commons
Barbara J. Evans
23 Technology dependent commons
Nina Wormbs

281

294
308

24 From historical institution to pars pro toto: the commons and
their revival in historical perspective
Tine De Moor

319

25 Customary authority and commons governance
Frank Matose, Phil René Oyono and James Murombedzi

334

26 The role of pseudo-commons in post-socialist countries
Insa Theesfeld

345

27 Facilitated self-governance of the commons: on the roles of civil
society organizations in the governance of shared resource systems
Frank van Laerhoven and Clare Barnes
28 Commons, indigenous rights, and governance
Iliana Monterroso, Peter Cronkleton and Anne M. Larson
29 Globalization, local commons, and the multiscale ecosystem
framework (MEF)
Timothy O. Randhir

vii

360

376

392


Contents

PART III

A global context

399

30 Bigger issues in a smaller world: the future of the commons
Cheryl Chan, Fatima Noor Khan and Sajida Awan

401

31 Protecting the global commons: the politics of planetary boundaries
Oran R. Young and Falk Schmidt

412

Index425

viii


FIGURES

  2.1 Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework
  2.2 Revised SES Framework with multiple first-tier components
  2.3 Institutions of sustainability
  3.1 Model of the scientific process
  3.2 A combined representation of the two frameworks
  5.1 Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework
  6.1 The standard solution to commons tragedy

  6.2 Revealing the hidden half of the ownership spectrum
  6.3 Ordinary use as the end point
  6.4 The trilogy of ownership
  6.5 The familiar split in ownership
  6.6 The new spectrum of use
  6.7 Goldilocks’ quest for the optimum
  6.8 An ownership puzzle
  6.9 The full spectrum of ownership
  6.10 The full spectrum of property, revealed
  6.11 Value symmetry in an anticommons and a commons
  6.12 Substitutes versus complements
10.1 Framework for Humanistic Rational Choice Theory
14.1 Resource systems at the coastal interface
14.2 Diversity of characteristics of resource systems
14.3 Diversity of characteristics of the governance system
14.4 Diversity of characteristics of the resource units
14.5 Diversity of characteristics of actors involved
14.6 Coastal interdependencies: links and missing links
20.1Infrastructure
20.2 Infrastructure optimized for market demand
20.3 Infrastructure with commons management
20.4 BBC infrastructure with commons management
23.1 Spectrum chart from the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS)
24.1 Micro-perspective: how to achieve resilience on the commons?
ix

11
12
13
29

30
53
64
64
65
66
66
67
67
68
68
69
70
70
121
173
175
177
179
180
183
260
261
262
264
313
327


Figures

27.1
27.2
27.3
29.1

Facilitated self-governance in relation to other modes of
CPR governance
A typology of CSO approaches to institutional change
A framework to study the influence of CSO interventions on
CPR conservation and community livelihoods
Multiscale ecosystem framework (MEF) model

x

363
367
370
393


TABLES

  4.1
  4.2
12.1
12.2
16.1
17.1
17.2

18.1
26.1
30.1

Basic features and necessary conditions of polycentric systems
Attributes and institutional essentials of polycentric systems
Typology of goods
Reassessment/reinterpretation of the evidence from Ostrom’s work
Examples of benefits and impairments and adverse effects of
human–wildlife interactions
Analysis of CPR regimes according to the eight design principles
Example of robust institutions and payment for ES incentive
Frameworks, disciplines and methods used in our research
Four periods of change in Central Europe
Summary of shared attributes between the global commons
and the new commons

xi

44
45
145
147
199
213
215
230
348
409

CONTRIBUTORS

Eduardo Araral is Associate Professor at Lee Yew School of Public Policy, National University
of Singapore and Co-director of the Institute of Water Policy.
Sajida Awan is enrolled in the PhD program “Social and Ecological Sustainability” at
University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research area is “role of knowledge co-production in
climate smart agriculture”. She is also associated with Environmental Change and Governance
Group (ECGG) and Graduate Student Association at University of Waterloo. She has worked
with the Governance Unit of UNDP Pakistan for almost three years. In her role as Program
Associate she has been independently, as well as in support of other team members, working
on rule of law, strengthening democracy through parliament, legal empowerment of the poor,
and election and other governance-related projects. She has played a key role in conceptualizing and scoping the Rule of Law Project funded by the Netherlands and the Government of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sajida has also successfully worked in the UNICEF for two-and-a-half
years on its Water, Environment and Sanitation projects under the Earthquake Emergency
Support Program.
Clare Barnes is a lecturer in the Geography and Lived Environment group at the University
of Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests are in forest and landscape governance in the Global
South, especially in South Asia. She holds a PhD in Environmental Governance from Utrecht
University, the Netherlands. Her PhD work was on the roles of civil society organizations in
community forestry in India.
Esther Blanco is an Associate Professor of the Department of Public Finance at the University
of Innsbruck, Austria, and Affiliated Faculty at the Ostrom Workshop, Bloomington, USA.
Her research agenda addresses how individuals make decisions in social dilemmas, focusing on incentives and how these incentives are affected by contextual factors such as institutional change. Her research outcomes have been published in multidisciplinary journals
such as Science Advances and top field journals in environmental economics and experimental economics. Her research has received international press attention, including from The
Washington Post.

xii

Contributors

Stanislava Brnkalakova completed the Master’s program Environmental Planning and
Management in the Department of Landscape Ecology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at
Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. During her PhD studies, she did research on
adaptive management of mountain ecosystem services with the emphasis on climate change
mitigation at the Institute of Management at Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.
Currently, she has been working as a researcher in the Department of Strategic Environmental
Analysis at the Institute of Forest Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. She also
takes part in research at the CETIP Network and Centre of Excellence SPECTRA.
Cheryl Chan holds an MES in Environment and Resource Studies from the University of
Waterloo, Canada. Prior to graduate studies, she received a BSc in Biology and a BEd in
Secondary Education from Queen’s University, Canada. After graduating from her Master’s
program, she completed a Research Award in the Networked Economies program at the
International Development Research Centre, where she has since transitioned into the role of
Program Management Officer. Her research activities include governance of both traditional
commons (e.g. fisheries) and new commons (e.g. knowledge and digital commons).
Dan Cole is a Professor of Law and of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University,
USA. Cole has published 10 books and more than 60 articles on a wide range of topics, including property systems for common-pool resources. A former member of the Ostrom Workshop
at Indiana University, he most recently edited (with Michael D. McGinnis) a four volume
compendium, Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of Political Economy.
Michael Cox is an Environmental Social Scientist and Associate Professor of Environmental
Studies at Dartmouth College, USA. He studies community-based natural resource management and sustainability transitions in agricultural systems.
Peter Cronkleton is a Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR) and holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida, USA. He is a specialist in community forestry development, forest tenure, institutional change and participatory
methods. Based in Peru, he has worked as a researcher and development practitioner in Latin
America and Africa for more than 25 years.
Brigham Daniels is a Professor at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School,
USA. He holds a PhD from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and his JD
from Stanford Law School, both USA.

Daniel A. DeCaro is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Public Affairs and Psychological and
Brain Sciences at the University of Louisville, USA. He directs the Social Decision Making and
Sustainability Lab. His research examines human motivation and decision-making processes in
social dilemmas in both experimental and field contexts. Current research topics include participatory democracy, legal foundations of self-governance, regulatory systems, social learning and
public education, and governance of water resources and cities.
Tine De Moor is a Professor in Social and Economics History at Utrecht University, the
Netherlands, dealing with, in particular, institutions for collective action in historical perspective. Besides her academic work on commons and cooperatives in the past and present she has

xiii


Contributors

been actively involved in the International Association for the Study of the Commons both as
council member and president.
Barbara J. Evans, PhD, JD, LLM, is the Mary Ann and Lawrence E. Faust Professor of Law
and Director of the Center for Biotechnology & Law at the University of Houston Law Center,
USA, and holds a joint appointment as Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of
Houston Cullen College of Engineering.
Sheila R. Foster is a joint Professor of Public Policy and Law at Georgetown University,
USA. Professor Foster is the author of numerous publications on land use, property and environmental law. She is one of the country’s leading scholars on environmental justice. Her most
recent work explores city growth and governance through the lens of the “urban commons”.
As Co-director with Christian Iaione of the Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons
(LabGov), she is currently engaged with a groundbreaking international applied research project, the “Co-Cities Project”. Their latest article, “The City as a Commons”, is published in
the Yale Law and Policy Review (2016) and is the basis of a forthcoming book on the Co-City
for MIT Press.
Brett M. Frischmann is The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business
and Economics at Villanova University, USA. He is also an affiliated scholar of the Center
for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, USA, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for
Internet & Society, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He has published foundational books on the

relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons, and spillovers, including Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012), Governing
Knowledge Commons (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Michael Madison and Katherine
Strandburg), and Governing Medical Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with
Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg). His latest interdisciplinary book, Re-Engineering
Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 2018, with Evan Selinger) explores how we engineer
ourselves through the techno-social world we build.
Veronika Gezik obtained her PhD in Ecological Economics from University of Sussex,
UK. She currently works for the Department of Strategic Environmental Analyses Institute
of Forest Ecology Slovak Academy of Sciences associated with the Faculty of Management
Comenius University and the Slovak University of Technology. She is an active member of
CETIP Network.
Philipp Grundmann is Senior Scientist at the Leibniz-Institute for Agricultural Engineering
and Bioeconomy and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of
Agricultural Sciences at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His areas of teaching and
research are agricultural and resource economics, institutional analysis of sociotechnical innovations, and transitions in agro-food systems and the bioeconomy.
Konrad Hagedorn is Senior Professor at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural
Sciences at Humboldt University Berlin, Director of the Berlin Institute for Co-operative
Studies and was head of the Division of Resource Economics. His areas of teaching and research
are environmental and resource economics, institutional analysis of social-ecological-technical
systems, and post-socialist transition processes.

xiv


Contributors

Nina Hagemann is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Technische Universität
Dresden / International Institute Zittau, Germany, and a postdoctoral researcher at the
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany. As an institutional
economist, her research interests are on the sustainable management of natural resources

(especially water and soil), governance of the forest-based bioeconomy, and the assessment
of agroecosystem services.
Michael Heller is Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School,
USA, and has served as the school’s Vice Dean for Intellectual Life. He writes and teaches on
private law theory. Heller has authored several books, including The Choice Theory of Contracts
(Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Hanoch Dagan); The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much
Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (New York: Basic Books, 2008); and
the two-volume edited collection Commons and Anticommons (Elgar, 2009); along with dozens
of academic articles on property, contracts, and land use.
Bruce Huber is Professor of Law and the Robert and Marion Short Research Scholar at Notre
Dame Law School in South Bend, Indiana, USA. He holds a JD and PhD (Political Science)
from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. His research and teaching focus on the law
of property and natural resource management in the USA .
Blake Hudson holds the A. L. O’Quinn Chair in Environmental Law at the University of
Houston Law Center, USA, where he is a Professor of Law. His research currently spans the
analysis of governance structure and private property rights impacts on natural resources management, the intersection of land development and natural capital protection, and the cultural
factors influencing natural resources and environmental law and policy. He teaches courses in
Natural Resources Law and Policy, Water Law, and Property Law at Houston Law.
Christian Iaione is Associate Professor of Urban Law and Policy, Regulatory Innovation
and Land Use at LUISS Guido Carli, Italy, and faculty director of LabGov – LABoratory for
the GOVernance of the City as Commons (www.labgov.city). He was the expert on the EU
Committee of the Regions who drafted the opinion on the “Local and regional dimension of the
sharing economy”. He is a member of the Sharing Economy International Advisory Board of the
Seoul Metropolitan Government, South Korea, and adviser to several Italian local governments
and institutions (Tuscany Region, City of Rome, City of Bologna, City of Reggio Emilia). He is
Urban Innovative Actions expert appointed by the European Commission for the Co-City project of the City of Turin, Italy, lead expert of the EU Urbact program, and a member of the Urban
Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Procurement within the Urban Agenda for the EU.
Tim C. Jennerjahn is a Senior Scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research
in Bremen, Germany. His research focuses on the biogeochemical response of coastal aquatic
systems to environmental change in tropical regions at present and in the past, in particular on

the impact of inputs of nutrients, organic matter, organic pollutants, and suspended sediments
on mangroves, seagrasses, and coastal seas. He is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.
Fatima Noor Khan holds an MES in Environment and Resource Studies from the University
of Waterloo, Canada. Prior to graduate studies, she received a BES from York University, Canada.

xv


Contributors

Since graduating from her Master’s program, she has been working as a sustainability professional in the field of waste management. Her social-ecological systems research has focused
primarily on small-scale fisheries where she has explored gender dynamics in relation to
environmental change.
Tatiana Kluvankova is a Professor of Management and Head of the Department of Strategic
Environmental Analyses Institute of Forest Ecology Slovak Academy of Sciences, associated
with the Faculty of Management Comenius University Bratislava and the Slovak University
of Technology.
Anne M. Larson is a Principal Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR), based in Lima, Peru. She obtained her PhD in 2001 from University of California at
Berkeley, USA, in Wildland Resource Science, with an emphasis on resource policy and institutions. She has done both more traditional and action research, as well as supporting innovative
initiatives such as the design of a diploma course for indigenous communities and leaders. Her
current research priorities include opportunities for and challenges to forest tenure reforms;
women’s rights to land in communal forests; and multilevel governance, REDD+, and low
emissions development.
Michal Maco obtained his PhD degree in the study programme Spatial Planning at the Institute
of Forest Ecology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia. During his studies,
he focused on the application of commons theories on public spaces. Thus, his PhD research
develops the topic particularly concerning the governance of public and common urban spaces.
Now he is an external worker at CETIP Network, Prague.

Michael J. Madison is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Innovation Practice
Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and Senior Scholar and Academic Director of
the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. His research and
scholarship address intellectual property law and policy, as well as questions concerning the
production and distribution of knowledge and innovation. He is the author of more than 40
journal articles and book chapters, the co-editor of Governing Knowledge Commons (Oxford
University Press, 2014) and Governing Medical Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University
Press, 2017), and the co-author of The Law of Intellectual Property (5th ed., Wolters Kluwer,
2017). He was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 2016. He received
his law degree from Stanford University and his undergraduate degree from Yale University,
both USA.
Mary Anderlik Majumder, JD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Center
for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
She received an AB magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1985, a JD from Yale Law
School in 1989, and a PhD from Rice University in 1997, all USA. Her current research interests include the ethical, legal, and social implications of new genomic technologies, and ethical
and policy questions related to problems of cost, quality, and access in health care.
Frank Matose currently holds the position of Associate Professor and Director of Environmental
Humanities South Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he has been
since 2009. Before that he was Programme Leader for the Community-Based Natural Resource

xvi


Contributors

Management Programme at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of
the Western Cape, USA, from 2004 to 2008. Prior to that he was Adaptative and Collaborative
Management Project Leader in Zimbabwe for the Centre for International Forestry Research
between 2000 and 2003. In the 1990s Frank worked in Harare, in the Social Forestry Research
Unit in the Zimbabwe Forestry Commission. He is currently preparing a monograph titled

“Beyond Waiting Politics in Conservation: Forests and the Power of the Marginalised in
Southern Africa”, for University of Arizona Press.
Bonnie J. McCay is an environmental anthropologist who specializes in the study of marine
fisheries based on field research on the fringes of the North Atlantic and the eastern Pacific
oceans. Her work is informed by theories concerning common pool resources, and she has held
leadership positions in the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC).
Until her recent retirement she was a distinguished professor at Rutgers the State University
of New Jersey, USA, in the Department of Human Ecology. She is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Michael D. McGinnis received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Minnesota,
USA, and currently serves as Associate Dean for Social and Historical Sciences and Graduate
Education in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, USA. He previously served
as Director of The Ostrom Workshop, an inter-disciplinary research and teaching center focused
on the study of institutions, resource management, and governance. His current research focuses
on institutional analysis as applied to US health policy.
Amy L. McGuire is the Leon Jaworski Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Director of the
Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Baylor College of Medicine, USA. Her
research explores the legal and ethical issues in genomics with a particular focus on genomic
research ethics, and the ethical and policy issues related to the clinical integration of genomics.
Currently, she is on the program committee for the Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholars
Program in Bioethics and is President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors.
Iliana Monterroso, environmental scientist, recently completed her post-doc fellowship
with CIFOR. Since 2014 she has coordinated research activities of the Global Comparative
Study on Design and Implementation on Tenure Reforms in Peru and Colombia where she
led the analysis of outcomes from land and forest right-recognition processes in the Amazon.
She holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Autonomous Barcelona University, Spain.
Her research focus is on collective tenure, gender, and socio-environmental conflicts in
Latin America.
Maitreyee Mukherjee is currently pursuing her PhD in Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. With a background in bio-sciences

and environmental management, her broad research interests lie in understanding the dynamics of environmental issues in governmental agenda with special focus on water-related environmental regulation and polices. Her prior work, under the capacity of Research Associate
at Institute of Water Policy, LKYSPP, included projects in urban water management, water
pricing, and environmental sustainability in water resource development projects. In addition to her research exposure, she is also a trained teacher and loves interacting with young
inquisitive minds.

xvii


Contributors

Seema Mundoli is an Associate at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. Her research
examines the challenges of ecological sustainability and equity faced by an urbanizing India. Her
research interests range from understanding historical use and transformations of nature in cities
to advancing governance of ecosystems as urban commons in Indian cities.
James Murombedzi is the Officer in Charge of the Economic Commission for Africa’s
African Climate Policy Center (ACPC) based in Ethiopia.
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, India, where she
anchors research examining urban social-ecological sustainability. She is a 2013 Elinor Ostrom
Senior Scholar awardee and has published widely in areas of remote sensing, conservation,
urbanization, and the commons. Her book Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and
Future (Oxford University Press, 2016) examines the impact of urbanization on human-nature
relationships from a Global South perspective.
Serik Orazgaliyev is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev
University, Kazakhstan, and a Research Fellow at Cambridge Central Asia Forum. He received
his doctoral degree in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, UK. His main
areas of research include governments and multinational enterprises (MNEs), institutions and
development policies, Caspian energy geopolitics, and Central Asian Studies.
Phil René Oyono is a natural resource senior researcher. He studied sociology, anthropology,
and social philosophy. Oyono’s research field covers natural resource management decentralization policies, institutional change, resource tenure, resource governance, redistribution, domination, conflict, violence, and community vulnerabilities and adaptation.
Jouni Paavola is Professor of Environmental Social Science and Director of the UK Economic

and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy
(CCCEP) in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, UK. His research
examines the role of institutions and social justice in environmental governance.
Stefan Partelow holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California,
USA, an MSc in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University,
Sweden, and a PhD in Political Science from Jacobs University, Germany. He currently works
as a social scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen,
Germany conducting research on coastal commons, collective action in the marine realm, and
social-ecological systems.
Faye Victoria Sit Ying Qi is a PhD Candidate at the Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy,
National University of Singapore. Her previous work and research interests encompass development planning and collective action regarding common pool resources in urban and peri-urban
areas.
Timothy O. Randhir is a Professor and Graduate Program Director with the Department of
Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts, USA. He holds a PhD from
Purdue University, USA, and has expertise in complex systems, ecological economics, environmental sciences, and ecohydrology. His research covers multiple scales and countries in addressing issues
as integrated and dynamic systems.
xviii


Contributors

Katharina Rauchenecker received her PhD at the Division of Resource Economics at
Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, under Dr. Konrad Hagedorn. Her scientific scope
was hunting and game management in Germany with special focus on self-organized governance. She publishes as a freelancer. Currently she’s working for the Roman Catholic Church in
Germany and investigates institutional change within the organization.
Jonathan Rosenbloom is the Dwight D. Opperman Distinguished Professor of Law and
Director of Environmental and Sustainability Programming at Drake University Law School,
USA. In partnership with the University of Colorado Denver, USA, Jonathan is co-director
of the Sustainable Development Code, a model land use code designed to provide local governments with the best sustainability practices in land use. Jonathan received a Bachelor in
Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, a JD from New York Law School, and

an LLM from Harvard Law School, all USA. He was named Drake Law Outstanding Professor
of the Year in 2013; University of Oregon, School of Law Environmental & Natural Resource
Distinguished Visitor in 2016; Vermont Law School, Distinguished Environment Law Scholar
in 2017; and Stevens Faculty Scholar of the Year in 2018.
Christian Schleyer is a Temporary Professor at the Section of International Agricultural Policy
and Environmental Governance at the University of Kassel, Germany. He also leads a small
research team on forest-related governance innovations at the Institute of Geography at the
University of Innsbruck, Austria. As an ecological and institutional economist, he works on
sustainable use of natural resources such as water, soil, forests, and biodiversity within socialecological-technical systems.
Achim Schlüter holds the Chair of Social Systems and Ecological Economics at the Leibniz
Institute of Tropical Marine Research in Bremen, and at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany.
His interest gravitates around institutions in the sense of rules which allow for an economic,
social, and ecological sustainable use of tropical coastal and marine systems. Those aspects have
been studied within his lab in various different fields like aquaculture, marine litter, sea level
rise, tourism, and fisheries. From a methodological perspective, the main emphasis is, on the
one hand, on qualitative case study research and, on the other, on social science/economic
experiments.
Falk Schmidt is the Head of the Secretariat of the Science Platform Sustainability 2030, established in 2017 at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Germany.
Prior to this position, he was an academic officer at the Executive Office at the IASS Potsdam.
He has a broad interest in sustainability issues, the role of the human dimensions of global
change and governance in the Anthropocene, and the interface of science–policy–society.
Katherine J. Strandburg is the Albert B. Engelberg Professor of Law at New York University
School of Law and Faculty Director of NYU’s interdisciplinary Information Law Institute. She
teaches and researches in the areas of patent law, innovation policy, information privacy law,
and the legal and policy ramifications of data analytics and algorithmic decision making. Prior to
her legal career, she was a physicist studying phase transitions and critical phenomena.
Insa Theesfeld PhD is Professor in Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy at the Martin
Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. She is an agricultural and institutional economist who developed an interest in governance questions of various shared natural resources.
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Contributors

A significant strand of her work explored the specificities in commons management in postsocialist countries. She is a known “Commons” scholar, leading the European branch of the
International Association for the Study of the Commons since 2018.
Andreas Thiel holds the Chair of International Agricultural Policy and Environmental
Governance at University of Kassel, Germany. His research focuses on the role of institutions
and governance and their change in the context of social-ecological systems and natural resource
management in the European Union and in East Africa (Ethiopia). He is affiliated with the
faculty of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.
Ongoing research addresses the constitutional determinants of polycentric resource governance
and its performance and institutional fit, as well as the determinants of change of polycentric
natural resource governance, with particular focus on agriculture, climate change adaptation,
water and natural resource management.
Luz Elba Torres-Guevara is an Associate Professor in the International School of Economic
and Administrative Sciences at Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia. She is a Business
Administrator with a Master’s in Rural Development and another Master’s in Education,
all from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, and a PhD in Economics from
Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. She focuses her research on the governance of natural
resources and the economic, cultural, social, and environmental analysis of farming production
systems and agri-food systems, with emphasis on self-sufficiency and reciprocal exchange of
agricultural products.
Hita Unnikrishnan is currently a Newton International Fellow at the Urban Institute of The
University of Sheffield, UK, and a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University, India. Her research
focuses on social-ecological systems in the Global South and she has a number of publications
including an upcoming book on the social-ecological transition of historical urban lake systems
in Bengaluru. She has also been a 2013 recipient of the Professor Elinor Ostrom Fellowship on
Practice and Policy in the Commons.
Frank van Laerhoven obtained a PhD in Public Policy from Indiana University, USA. He
currently works at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development of Utrecht University,

the Netherlands, where his teaching and research gear around topics related to the governance
of shared resource systems. He is a co-editor in chief of The International Journal of the Commons.
Before joining the ranks of academia he worked for FAO in Senegal and Chile.
Josephine van Zeben is fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford, UK. She
holds law degrees from the University of Edinburgh, UK; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and
Harvard University, USA, as well as a BA in Social Sciences from the University of Utrecht,
the Netherlands, and a PhD in Law and Economics from the University of Amsterdam, the
Netherlands. Her research centres on the functioning (and malfunctioning) of multilevel and
polycentric systems, particularly in the area of environmental regulation and with respect to the
European Union.
James M. Walker is Professor of Economics at Indiana University, USA, and a long time
faculty affiliate of the Ostrom Workshop. His research focuses on the use of experimental
methods in the investigation of individual and group behaviour related to social dilemma environments. He has published in a wide range of academic journals and co-authored with his
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Contributors

colleagues Elinor Ostrom and Roy Gardner, the widely cited book, Rules Games, and Common
Pool Resources (University of Michigan Press, 1994).
Nina Wormbs is an Associate Professor in History of Science and Technology at KTH Royal
Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Her main strands of interest are media history, in particular broadcasting, and the knowledge production and communication of climate change in the
Arctic, especially the shrinking sea ice.
Oran R. Young is Professor Emeritus at the Bren School of Environmental Science and
Management at the University of California, USA. He has spent his career analysing the roles
that social institutions play in addressing needs for governance in a variety of settings. His
applied work deals with issues of international environmental governance relating to the oceans,
the atmosphere, and the polar regions, and with issues of comparative environmental governance as they arise in China and the USA. His most recent book is Governing Complex Systems:
Social Capital for the Anthropocene (MIT Press, 2017).
Peter D. Zuk is PhD candidate in Philosophy at Rice University and Research Associate at

Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, both USA. He
received an MA in Philosophy from Rice University in 2014 and a BA in Philosophy from
Pepperdine University in 2012, both USA. His research focuses on ethical theory, social-political
philosophy, and neuroethics. He is also co-founder of Ethics and Society at Rice, a summer
enrichment program for economically disadvantaged high school students.

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1
INTRODUCTION
Commons analytical frameworks
and case studies
Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom and Dan Cole

The term “commons” has come to mean many things to many people and is used inconsistently
within the literature. Understanding what constitutes commons resources and their use has become
even more challenging in light of the expanded application of commons study. Although the
dilemmas associated with commons resource management had been raised in academic scholarship
far earlier, Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons (1968) popularized the management difficulties faced by users of common pool resources (or CPRs). Since 1968 commons scholarship has
expanded dramatically, both in depth of theoretical analysis and breadth of subject matter covered.
Further, a number of regimes have been utilized to manage CPRs, including common-property
regimes, government regulation, and private property. Expansion of commons scholarship coupled
with the existence of multiple definitions and perspectives on what constitutes a “commons” make
studying CPRs and their management both a theoretical and analytical challenge.
This book endeavors to provide a holistic perspective on the current state of commons
study. It provides a broad overview of the arc of commons scholarship to date, paying particular attention to varying definitions and components of particular categories of commons
analyses. It identifies cross-cutting themes and deconstructs foundational principles presented
in commons literature by addressing the following questions: Who are the actors utilizing

resources? What are the activities in which they are engaged? What institutions condition
their activities? What are the resources affected by the actors’ activities? What assumptions are
embedded in the terms “commons”? How is the “commons” label designed to help understand
resource appropriation behaviors and how to manage that appropriation? How should those
understandings be used to inform management modifications and policy decisions?
Commons scholarship has developed in at least three ways—theoretically, metaphorically,
and through empirical case study. Part I presents the increasingly firm foundation of theoretical
scholarship on the commons, which has resulted, in part, from the development and application
of “frameworks of analysis,” or lenses through which to undertake commons study and understand the nature and management of commons resources. Part I explores questions such as: Why
develop analytical frameworks of analysis to begin with? What are the core components of analytical frameworks and the fundamental, overarching goals driving their use? What are the most
prominent frameworks in the field of commons literature? Which frameworks are best utilized
for certain subject matter? Which frameworks are more useful in facilitating the interdisciplinary

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Blake Hudson et al.

lens of analysis sought by many commons scholars? Are certain frames of analysis more widely
applicable across subject matters?
Chapter 2 explores the implications of scientific communities using analytical frameworks
of general applicability to organize research, exploring differences in framing, languages, and
heuristics, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of existing analytical frameworks utilized
and how they may be improved to facilitate interdisciplinary study of commons problems.
Chapter 3 drills down more deeply into the specific frameworks of Institutional Analysis and
Development (IAD) and Social-ecological Systems (SES), assessing the ways in which frameworks steer scholarly attention, shape conclusions, and provide a common, meta-theoretical language to enable scholars to engage with each other and produce comparable findings. Chapter 4
analyzes the theoretical and empirical development of the polycentric system framework, with a
view toward facilitating a more nuanced identification of categories of polycentric systems and
detecting those polycentric features that need to be strengthened in order for such a system to
thrive. Chapter 5 delves into the connection between the conceptual framework of IAD and the

empirical subject matter of the commons, and explores important connections across the IAD,
SES, and polycentric frameworks.
Chapters 6 and 7 shift gear from the more frequently analyzed analytical frameworks and
lay a foundation for understanding emerging commons frameworks—Anticommons and the
Knowledge Commons Research Framework, respectively. Chapter 8 introduces the reader
to how the metaphorical use of commons stories can itself provide a theoretical lens useful for
understanding commons problems and solutions. Chapter 9 uses experimental economics to
present an analytical framework for understanding the strategic incentives associated with the
use of natural resources based upon the complementary analysis of production externalities and
degradation externalities. Chapter 10 concludes the book’s theoretical section by developing an
analytical framework that departs from narrow self-interest as the primary description of human
behavior, and that describes the problem of cooperation in terms of fundamental needs and
social cognition. The chapter examines three elements of governance systems—shared decision
making, enforcement, and communication—that help to address several persistent questions
about cooperation and outline the next generation of behavioral theories of the commons.
The aggregation and analysis of analytical frameworks developed in Part I lays a foundation
for Part II’s exploration of how various analytical frameworks are applied by scholars from various disciplines. Part II presents case studies across diverse disciplines to demonstrate the modern
day breadth of study on the commons. Part II covers traditional natural resource commons, like
public lands, water, fisheries, and wildlife (Chapters 11, 12, 13, and 16) as well as emerging areas
of natural resource commons study, such as coastal ecosystems, climate change, and ecosystem
services generally (Chapters 14, 15, and 17). Part II then moves to the “new commons,” with
chapters focused on the urban environment and infrastructure as commons (Chapters 18, 19,
and 20). It further includes chapters on medical information and genomic data as commons, as
well as technological commons (Chapters 21, 22, and 23). Chapter 24 places the “revival” of
commons case studies into a historical perspective, while subsequent chapters look at governance
structures and commons through the lenses of customary authority, post-socialist societies, civil
society organizations and self-governance, and indigenous rights (Chapters 25, 26, 27, and 28).
Chapter 29 provides a segue into Part III’s analysis of global scale commons by discussing globalization, local commons, and a framework for assessing multiscale ecosystems.
The interdisciplinary approaches presented in Part II within the context of analytical
frameworks help facilitate a more complete understanding of both the shared and unique

challenges faced by commons resource users and managers across a broad range of disciplines,
the usefulness of the commons lens as an analytical tool for studying resource management
2