POL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Capital, Excludability, Community Management
5 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Actions of individuals are rational but lead to irrational outcome. Community management: observation that common resources do not always end in disaster as some theories predict. Irrigation systems in spain: timber harvesting in alpine switzerland, problems occur when we make assumptions of perfect rationality. Managing a commons: restricting access need to limit the non-excludable characteristic of common goods, state and market do this by assigning property rights, group property rights shared by users can allow users to effectively manager resource. Incentives for sustainable management create incentives that limit overuse: norms and the creation of rules by users can produce these incentives. Includes grazing lands, forests, waste" lands, irrigation systems, and paths and roads. Why does this system work so well: social pressure - if norms are broken, people can decide to not trade with the people that broke the rules) It makes it easier to manage the commons: equal work for equal reward.
