Ostrom, Elinor. “Institutions and common-pool resources.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 4, no. 3 (1992): 243-245.
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This issue contains four articles that make a unique contribution to our understanding of the incentives facing individuals who jointly use common-pool resources. Common-pool resources are ubiquitous. The most frequently cited examples of such resources are fisheries, irrigation systems, grazing lands, and forests. All common-pool resources (CPRs) share the characteristics that: (1) it is costly to exclude potential beneficiaries from gaining access to the resource and (2) each person’s use subtracts resource units from those available to others.’ Many constructed facilities such as bridges, parking garages and mainframe computer systems also share the same characteristics. With a broader view of ‘resource’, the definition also applies to many financial common pools such as the ‘public fisc’ created by the coerced resource mobilization capabilities of governments. Legislators appear to face incentives in their race to extract funds for their district from a government budget that are similar to those of fishers racing to catch fish.