Janssen, Marco A., and Elinor Ostrom. “Adoption of a new regulation for the governance of common-pool resources by a heterogeneous population.” In Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability , pp. 60-96. Princeton University Press, 2018.
URL1
The rich Lofoten cod fishery in northern Norway has been successfully self-governed and managed for more than one hundred years. The rules that regulate the use of this fishery—and make it likely that the fishery will be sustainable into the future—have been devised by the boat-owners themselves with minimal external assistance or coercion. Local regulatory committees are elected by the boat-owners, determine the rules for harvesting from the fishery, and effectively monitor this system (Princen 1998). Once their own rules are in place and monitored, and sanctions for noncompliance are regularly applied, it is relatively easy to understand why the boat-owners would comply with well-designed and enforced rules. How the users themselves developed their own rules and ways of monitoring and sanctioning noncompliance with these rules is much more difficult to understand given current accepted theories of collective action.