1996 National Public Policy Education Conference
Property Rights:
Their Allocation and Distribution
When we study why people create environmental problems, we
often locate the source in the tragedy of common property rights.
Bonnie McCay
anthropologist, Rutgers University;
president elect, International
Association for the Study of
Common Property
Formal thinking on common property derives from studies of
fisheries. We have used this model to manage our national resources.
Economists believe the maximum sustainable yield approach may
not equal maximum economic yield. They add that with open access—
no barriers—people will continue to enter into activities that dissipate a
profitable resource until the capital involved costs more than the
resource yields (e.g., whaling). This has been the basis for a long-
standing argument for limiting access, even establishing privatization.
Forms
of Property Rights
and the Impacts
of Changing
Ownership
Yet, there is another paradigm—the SocialZcommunity paradigm,
which focuses on collective action and other social responses to envi-
ronmental problems. It is a new, yet old response to the “tragedy of the
commons” theory, which holds that market regulation doesn't work
with common resources.
Common property is not a resource such as air or large waterways.
Rather, it is a cultural agreement—the ways people choose to relate to
each other and to a “common pool” resource. It implies an element of
“subtractibility”—e.g., that one person’s behavior could affect
another’s enjoyment. It implies some right to use in common with
others and/or not to be excluded from use. It also may imply that one
person cannot sell, exchange or transfer those rights.
Common property is a large class, including much that’s thought
of as state or public property.
Its boundaries and nature can vary. In Sweden, even foreigners
can enter private land to harvest wild mushrooms or berries in season.
In some villages, common property rights depend on citizenship or land
ownership. New Jersey beaches are municipal, but open to all for a fee.
Property rights should be distinguished from management
regimes, which can vary from laissez faire (with or without open
access) to market regulation (with or without private property rights),
from government regulation to communal regulation.
The relatively new paradigm of communal management holds that
self-governance will not always be possible or even wise, given the
nature of some resources (migratory species, competing claims, etc.).
But what may be possible is со-governance by the public and state.