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Hardin versus Ostrom: Can Development Affect the Propensity to Cooperate over Environmental Commons?
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 88, Number 1, Spring 2021
- pp. 99-114
- 10.1353/sor.2021.0007
- Article
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Abstract:
Who is right about the environmental commons: Hardin or Ostrom? This paper recommends using the views of Garrett Hardin and Elinor Ostrom in a complementary manner, arguing that they are not mutually exclusive in complex, evolving, multi-shot, and never-ending environmental common-pool resource management problems. In these problems, noncooperative (Hardinian) and cooperative (Ostromian) tendencies, behavior, and institutions can coexist while their levels of dominance continuously change. To determine their dominance levels and potential viability over time, the paper proposes considering propensity to cooperate as a variable that is dependent on societies’ level of development.