The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of
increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have
been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in …

To our parents and families for their love and inspiration To our Workshop family for their friendship
and support Copyright © by the University of Michigan 1994 All rights reserved Published in
the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United …

A major problem worldwide is the potential loss of fisheries, forests, and water resources.
Understanding of the processes that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural
resources is limited, because scientific disciplines use different concepts and languages to …

Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment.
Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered
from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often …

Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate
a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the
study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of …

I assume multiple types of players--“rational egoists,” as well as “conditional cooperators”
and “willing punishers”--in models of nonmarket behavior. I use an indirect evolutionary
approach to explain how multiple types of players could survive and flourish in social …

In a seminal paper, Garrett Hardin argued in 1968 that users of a commons are caught in an
inevitable process that leads to the destruction of the resources on which they depend. This
article discusses new insights about such problems and the conditions most likely to favor …

It is this process of building improvements on improvements that Page wants scholars to
understand and take seriously. Science itself, when organized in an open forum with diverse
participants challenging one another's work, is a superadditive process. So I urge scholars …

The term" common-property resource" is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to
property owned by a government or by no one. It is also used for property owned by a
community of resource users. Such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy …

Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns
and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis
of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural …