Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons

This chapter demonstrates the feasibility and challenge of moving beyond “The Tragedy of the Commons” that Garrett Hardin presented in 1968. Common-pool resources (CPR) are normally used by multiple individuals and generate finite quantities of resource units where one person’s use subtracts from the quantity of resource units available to others. In an effort to move beyond Hardin’s classic allegory, it is important that one does not dismiss Hardin’s predictions for some CPRs. The major problem of his original analysis was that he presented “the tragedy” as a universal phenomenon. In building a diagnostic CPR theory, scholars need to be aware of the extremely large potential set of variables that might be relevant for their studies. The framework starts with a first tier of variables that scholars studying CPRs can use in studying any particular focal system, ranging in scale from a small inshore fishery to the global commons.