For over four decades, the idea of using property policy provided a foundational tenet of landed resource management. Hardin (1968) presumed that the uncontrolled use of natural resources would result in overexploitation, leading to a “tragedy.” Therefore, clear regulations needed to be placed under a state or private property regime (Hardin, 1968). In response to Hardin’s (1968) analysis, an intuitionalist reading – referred to as the ‘collective action approach’ or ‘CPR theory’ – emerged focusing on common pool resources (CPRs) that are readily overused (Johnson, 2004; Saunders, 2014). This framework opened up a new way of thinking about, and managing the problem of complex and overlapping bundles of rights (Feeny et al., 1990; Robbins, 2004). According to CPR proponents, it is critical to differentiate the nature of the resource (CPR) from the management system, which exists with or without a property regime. CPRs are resources from which it is difficult to “exclude” others and where one person’s use subtracts from what others can use (Ostrom et al., 1994). Analytically, there are four recognized property regimes (state, private, common property and open access), under which CPRs are managed (Berkes, 2009; Berkes et al., 1989; Feeny et al., 1990; Ostrom, 2009). Hardin defined all situations as an open access problem as there were no specific property rights that he could discern governing the use of the resources and did not recognize existing community based natural resource management (CBNRM). Also, privatization or government control in practice has not necessarily avoided “tragedy” (Berkes et al., 1989; Feeny et al., 1990; National Research Council, 1986). Thus, key challenges for CPR management became that of ensuring exclusion and the degree of control necessary for managing the subtractability inherent in CPRs under joint use (Berkes et al., 1989). The CPR critique pointed to the existence of local actors collectively developing self-regulating capabilities to pursue exclusion and to regulate joint use under specific conditions. In studying why some communities still manage whilst others fail in management of CPRs (Berkes et al., 1989), CPR theorists focused on the effects of changing socio-political conditions on CPR management (Basurto and Ostrom, 2009; Berkes et al.,

1989; Ostrom et al., 1999). In this revisionist view central state ownership can be detrimental in so far as it breaks the self-governing capacities of community institutions and hinders their ability to exclude and avoid open access. Therefore, the answer to CPR management lay in recognizing and reinstalling historical or creating self-governance by community institutions. Alternatively, co-management1 approaches might provide a way to get coexisting management authorities to work together to govern resources held under complex bundles of rights (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; Berkes et al., 1989; Feeny et al., 1990). This refers to state-based actors enforcing state rules and norms, and collaborating with local communities under a communal regime (Berkes et al., 1989; Feeny et al., 1990). Here, discussion of community is critical. McCay and Jentoft (1998) argued that the CPR dilemma is not due to an absence of property rights, but is often attributed to the capacity of the community, which is vulnerable in maintaining social capital or can fail in its protection. This is due to changes in state policies or arrangements (members rely more on the state than on each other) and market-led socio-economic reforms, where economic production is not shaped by members’ needs, but by the needs of the market. The authors also emphasized the significance of traditional community management, particularly customary rules and regulations, in solving conflicting uses (McCay and Acheson, 1987). Thus, it was critical to strengthen the community through “co-management institutions and inclusion of userknowledge as a way of re-embedding management responsibilities within the local community” (McCay and Jentoft, 1998, p. 26). However, community is a fluid notion and is open to a challenge. McCay and Jentoft (1998) remained ambivalent regarding the mixed results of delivering community agenda through participatory development and devolution management schemes. This is, first, due to the misleading idea of communities, which are often seen as small units that are spatially and socially homogenous and wellintegrated in terms of interests, cooperation and distribution of resources (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; McCay and Jentoft, 1998, p. 27). Second, traditional communities should not be assumed as being protective of the environment as they have different intentions towards natural resources (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999) or have not always been able to protect nature. For instance, the extinction of certain species of wildlife in the Arctic occurred during the time of early hunters and gatherers (Lopez, 2001). Third, the possibility of community as a stakeholder assuming responsibility for resource management raises questions about power relations within the community; whether the community would serve the interests of all, or only those who seize authority and make the rules (Agrawal, 2003). For instance, feminist academics question whether customary communities can guarantee female members equal rights to benefits from resources as strengthened customary tenure is transformed into a structure in which most land rights are concentrated in the hands of a minority (Lastarria-Cornhiel, 1997). Agrawal and Gibson (1999) emphasized that communities have a heterogeneous nature in terms of social

composition, resource type and size of territory, which reflects their local political, resource management and broader social dynamics. Thus, community development and CBNRM needs to focus on the politics of the conservation process, which is embedded in local resource management. This process requires the acknowledgement of different actors, of their involvement in local level conservation processes and the strengthening of local resource management institutions. Strengthening weakened local institutions reconciles these different actors to the common goal of regulating power relations among the actors, who are involved in creating the institution, and structuring their interaction towards managing the resources. In this way, formal and informal institutions can function effectively, and remain free of a dominating interest (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999, p. 637). Therefore, the focus on resource management shifted from an absence of market mechanisms to engineering a complex set of existing local or traditional property institutions into a form of durable self-governing community institution. CPR theorists emphasized that it did not matter as to whether a formalized state or unofficial local institutions maintained the rules and enforcement capacity. This is mainly based on the assumption that “Global and national environmental policy is ignorant of local and traditional knowledge . . . [and] . . . leave[s] local officials and users with insufficient autonomy and understanding to design effective institutions” (Dietz et al., 2003, p. 1907). Thus, “those who impose must be seen as effective and legitimate by resource users” (Dietz et al., 2003, p. 1909). A key question became one of fit (ecological and social-structure), enforceability and legitimacy as users are likely to comply with rules and monitoring when involved in the decision making (Ostrom and Nagendra, 2006). Since the rules and norms were very diverse in different contexts, they focused on clarifying the institutional regularities which were found in long-lasting, successful CPR management, but which were missing in some of the failed cases. Thus, the challenge became one of clarifying the circumstances that might support improved CPR management, and either mending deficiencies in the old institutional arrangements, or crafting newer and better rules using a nested approach involving different layers of enterprises and actors in a wider enabling context (Agrawal, 2001; Agrawal and Ostrom, 2001; Ostrom et al., 1999). This process of designing principles implies a redefinition of local community groups and their resource management institutions (Agrawal, 2003). Institutional theorists came up with design principles that rely on 8-36 variables that communities need to possess to ensure a successful self-governing community institution (Agrawal, 2001). This design focuses on “the power to exclude people other than members of a defined community” (Ostrom et al., 1999, p. 7). The following variables appear to be crucial to the “principle of exclusion”: (a) a well-defined social and resource boundary of (b) a smaller size group with (c) all local members affected by the resource regime involved in developing or modifying the rules (Agrawal, 2001; Agrawal and Ostrom, 2001; Dietz et al., 2003; Ostrom, 2009; Schlager, 2004; Wollenberg et al., 2007). Although not

a prescription for institutional design, community self-governing institutions become an alternative to the state-led and market-oriented policies that governed CPR management (Agrawal, 2003; Marshall, 2008). However, recognizing complexity in real life, Ostrom (2009) acknowledged the importance of going “beyond a panacea,” a universal design principle, and incorporating flexibility when addressing the specific social and historical aspects in various CPR governance arrangements in different contexts and tenure regimes. Thus, there is a challenge of engineering a form of durable property institution that has a capacity to cope and adapt in changing socio-political, economic and ecological conditions (Agrawal, 2010; Basurto and Ostrom, 2009; Feeny et al., 1990; Ostrom, 1990, 2009; Wollenberg et al., 2007). This challenge is related to the fact that it is difficult to apply these variables in different contexts, where resource type and user groups are mainly diverse and dynamic (Cleaver and Franks, 2005; Schlager, 2004). First, a design principle is usually applied without recognizing the socially constructed values that shape collective action (Ruttan 2000 cited in Cleaver and Franks, 2005). Design principles highlight the responsibility of rule-making to a minority within a group, those who have the power to rule over the majority of the members (Cleaver and Franks, 2005). Also, locally made rules are problematic to enforce as these can be quite abstract in the context of shared CPRs without clarifying what types of rules are appropriate to whom and who is local among the different communities and different actors (Agrawal, 2007). Second, a design principle is problematic when it is specifically focused on exclusion by drawing clearly defined social and resource boundaries. In reality, “resource boundaries rarely match social boundaries, and resources tend to be used by competing user-groups, even within the same community” (Berkes, 2009, p. 263). CPRs are usually shared among inter and intra groups in a reciprocal way. Defining a group’s social boundary without acknowledging inclusion or reciprocity between different groups is highly contested and ambiguous due to the different dimensions and effects of heterogeneity in a group’s collective action (Agrawal, 2007). The resource boundary is discussed more in terms of how property rights shape the outcome of exclusion rather than acknowledging how the biophysical or ecological condition affects the outcome (Agrawal, 2007). Third, it is questionable whether design principles reflect what constitutes a historical selfgoverning or customary institution in each context, and to what extent the centralized states broke the self-governing capacities of community institutions or historical interactions between different actors for co-management and their complementary role in CPR management. For instance, Ostrom et al. (1999, p. 278) assumed that Mongolian pastoral institutions were under traditional group management without specifying what constitutes a traditional group institution or what is the role of the state in shaping local community institution. In Inner Asia, mobile pastoralists were reported to be a “society within, rather than against, the state” (Meeker 2002 cited in Sneath, 2007, p. 191). Some scholars argue that multiple actors are involved in resource management, including different community groups and local authorities (Schlager, 2004).