Commons theory of voluntary action

Definition

A common, or commons is a pool or set of shared resources together with the agents controlling inflows and outflows of resources from the pool. Historically, in Great Britain and elsewhere a commons is a bundle of rights held jointly or collectively by a group of people; traditionally referred to land or real property, more recently also includes many other types of valuables (knowledge, open source software information, copyrights, social relations). In the commons theory of voluntary action, the term commons also refers to an association of those controlling such resource pools or collectively holding such rights.

Roughly speaking, that which belongs to all, this latter term not always meaning everyone in any universal sense, but merely all those involved in a particular situation. In the case of commons, it typically means everyone who is a member, everyone who is part of a reference group, or everyone who matters or whose opinion must be taken into account.

Since its introduction into economic and social theory in 1968 by Garrett Hardin, the concept of the commons has exercised a powerful hold on the collective imagination. In a powerful environmentalist polemic, Hardin argued in a Scientific American piece that private actions causing air, water and other forms of pollution, were a rapidly forming tragedy which could only be prevented by massive public action to protect the commons. That claim is, if examined carefully, grounded in the dichotomy public and private. Key to the response to Hardin's tragedy

Since that time, the commons as a metaphor for collective resources has been applied to a wide variety of collective choice problems. In the process, commons theory in general has become of the major new theoretical developments in international social science in recent decades.

The commons theory of association seeks to apply the metaphors of the commons, including common goods, enclosure and the tragedy, to a range of problems of associations, organizations and the resources necessary to maintain them.

Fundamental Types of Commons

In the commons theory of voluntary action, one of the most fundamental distinctions evident in the existing research is between natural commons, human-directed natural commons and social commons. . Natural commons are common pool resources entirely governed or regulated by natural biological or chemical processes. Human-directed natural commons are those involving associations or assembies seeking to collectively manage natural resource pools. Perhaps the best known examples of such commons are common field agriculture, common fisheries and collectively managed forests. Social commons are voluntary associations, nonprofit, social, scientific, religious, civic and other organizations and physical or symbolic assemblies (including scholarly and scientific journals) where the common pool resources are exclusively or predominantly symbolic and communication-based.

Another fundamental distinction among human-directed natural commons and social commons is between "old" commons, that are traditional, customary, self-governing and not governed or regulated by laws or regulations, and "new" commons, which are also self-governing, and also subject to legal regimes.