Copyright © 2005 by the author(s). Published here under licens.docx

Copyright © 2005 by the author(s). Published here under license
by the Resilience Alliance.
Cinner, J. 2005. Socioeconomic factors influencing customary
marine tenure in the Indo-Pacific. Ecology
and Society 10(1): 36. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art36/
Research
Socioeconomic factors influencing customary marine tenure in
the Indo-Pacific
Joshua Cinner1
ABSTRACT. For generations communities in the Western
Pacific have employed a range of resource
management techniques (including periodic reef closures, gear
restrictions, entry limitations, and the
protection of spawning aggregations) to limit marine resource
use. Localized control over marine resources,
commonly known as customary marine tenure (CMT), is the
legal and cultural foundation for many of
these practices. Because of their perceived potential to meet
both conservation and community goals, these
traditional resource management techniques are being
revitalized by communities, governments, and NGOs
as an integral part of national and regional marine conservation
plans in the Pacific. However, the viability
of conservation strategies built on a foundation of marine tenure
may be in question, as it remains unclear
whether marine tenure systems will be able to withstand the
profound social and economic changes sweeping

the Pacific region. Numerous studies have suggested that
changes in marine tenure are attributed to social
and economic factors, however, specific relationships between
socioeconomic conditions and marine tenure
are still not well understood. This paper examines the social and
economic characteristics of 21 coastal
communities in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and explores
the characteristics of the communities that
employ exclusive marine tenure to answer the following
questions: Which socioeconomic factors are related
to the presence of CMT regimes? How might socioeconomic
factors influence the ability of communities
to employ or maintain CMT regimes? Distance to market,
immigration, dependence on fishing, and conflicts
were found to be related to the presence of highly exclusive
marine tenure systems. Exploring these
relationships will help conservation practitioners better
understand how future social changes may influence
the foundation of conservation and development projects.
Key Words: customary marine tenure; common-property;
socioeconomic; Papua New Guinea; Indonesia.
INTRODUCTION
Contrary to Western society's propensity toward
managing marine resources as open-access
situations, another paradigm of common ocean
governance called Customary Marine Tenure
(CMT) is prevalent in parts of the Pacific. Under
CMT, access to inshore marine resources is
generally controlled by social units including
individuals, families, clans or other kinship-based
institutions, and villages (Carrier 1987, Ward 1997).
These marine tenure institutions can range from
relatively simple communally-owned marine areas

from which outsiders are excluded to the complex
and overlapping system of individual and family
rights to space, species, gear, and even specific
techniques of using gear described by Carrier (1987)
and Cinner et al. (in press a) in the Manus province
of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Although CMT has
been documented throughout the World (Hviding
1996), it has reached the highest level of
development in the Western Pacific (Ruddle and
Akimichi 1984), including Japan (Ruddle 1985),
Melanesia (Malinowski 1935, Hviding 1983, 1996,
Wright 1985, Carrier 1987, Aswani 1999, 2002,
Cooke et al. 2000, Foale and Macintyre 2000,
Hickey and Johannes 2002), Polynesia (Hoffmann
2002), Micronesia (Johannes 1981, Zann 1985),
Indonesia (Polunin 1984, Mantjoro 1996, Ruttan
1998, Harkes and Novaczek 2002), and Australia
(Johannes and MacFarlane 1984). Legal recognition
of marine tenure regimes can vary significantly
1James Cook University
mailto:[email protected]
Ecology and Society 10(1): 36
between countries. For example, in PNG customary
ownership of marine resources is formally
recognized in the constitution (Hyndman 1993).
Alternatively, much of neighboring Indonesia is
open-access. However, in some northern and
eastern regions of Indonesia (i.e., parts of Muluku,

North Sulawesi, and West Papua provinces), de
facto marine tenure systems still govern local access
to marine resources (see Polunin 1984, Mantjoro
1996, Ruttan 1998, Harkes and Novaczek 2002).
In response to the degradation of inshore marine
resources in many Pacific countries, governments
and conservation groups are examining whether and
how CMT regimes can be integrated into the modern
conservation context (Cooke et al. 2000, Hoffmann
2002, Johannes 2002). CMT is particularly
important in the context of resource management
because it can serve as the legal and cultural
foundation for other taboos such as gear
prohibitions and spatial restrictions (Ruddle 1998,
Aswani and Hamilton 2004). Where CMT is
recognized, the highly decentralized authority over
marine resources can also facilitate rapid adaptive
response to changes in ecological or social
conditions because decisions about limiting
resource use can be made without the process of
involving a centralized bureaucracy. Basing
resource conservation initiatives around marine
tenure regimes is particularly attractive to
conservation organizations and donors because
enforcement of specific fishing regulations within
a tenure is generally the responsibility of the
resource owner (Asafu-Adjaye 2000). By
empowering community self-enforcement of
fisheries regulations, CMT may provide a cost-
effective means to reduce the burden on government
intervention, regulation, and enforcement (Johannes
1981, Hviding 1996, Ruddle 1998). This is
particularly important in the economic context of
the Pacific where fisheries departments are typically
understaffed and under-funded (Johannes 1981).

Customary tenure regimes are the foundation of
marine governance in much of the Pacific, but they
must be better understood if they are to be
effectively incorporated in resource management
and development initiatives. In particular, very little
is known about the social and economic frameworks
that allow communities to employ or maintain CMT
regimes. An array of theoretical and empirical
research has shown that common property
governance systems can be affected by
socioeconomic factors such as religious or cultural
homogeneity (Ostrom 1990), market influences
(Hviding 1996, Henrich et al. 2001), transaction
costs of decision-making (Ostrom 1990, Sumalde
2004), dependence on resources (Lise 2000,
Agrawal 2001, Zanetell and Knuth 2004), social
capital (Pretty and Ward 2001, Pretty 2003, Pretty
and Smith 2004), conflicts (Polunin 1984, Adams
et al. 2003) settlement patterns (Aswani 2002,
Aswani and Hamilton 2004), and resource
variability (see Agrawal 2002 for a comprehensive
review of the factors influencing the emergence and
successful functioning of common property
institutions). The studies specific to CMT suggest
that many of these social and economic factors can
influence the nature and function of marine tenure
institutions (Pollnac 1984, Polunin 1984, Baines
1989, Watson 1989, Hviding 1996, Cooke et al.
2000, Foale and Macintyre 2000, Aswani 2002),
although specific relationships between socioeconomic
conditions and CMT are sometimes contradictory
and are still not well understood. For example,
Watson (1989) discusses how changing socioeconomic
conditions can render resource management

strategies ineffective and inappropriate. Alternatively,
Hviding (1996) documents how marine tenure rules
became more exclusive for both commercial and
subsistence activities in the Morovo Lagoon in
response to increased prices of particular shells.
Here I ask the following questions: Which
socioeconomic factors are related to the presence of
CMT regimes? How might these socioeconomic
factors influence the ability of communities to
employ or maintain CMT regimes? To date, most
research examining the social, economic, and
cultural factors influencing CMT has utilized a
relatively small number of cases or examined these
issues over a very limited geographical area. Despite
the important contributions that small n case studies
have made toward understanding CMT regimes, a
fundamental limitation of this approach is that it
does not allow us to discern larger patterns in how
CMT regimes may respond to social and economic
factors over a wider geographical context. In this
paper, I seek to complement the more detailed case
studies on the subject by using a comparative
approach to examine the potential socioeconomic
factors influencing viable CMT institutions in 21
coastal communities in Papua New Guinea and
Indonesia.
METHODS

Data collection
Between October 2001 and January 2003, research
was conducted in 15 villages in Papua New Guinea
(PNG) and six villages in North Sulawesi, Indonesia
(Fig. 1). A number of criteria were used to select
the study sites. Research was conducted as part of
an interdisciplinary Wildlife Conservation Society
project that assessed the effectiveness of coral reef
conservation in the Indo-Pacific (Cinner et al. 2003;
Cinner et al. in press b, McClanahan et al.
unpublished data). Agrawal (2001, 2002) suggests
that purposively selecting sites that have variation
in theoretically significant variables is a defensible
sampling methodology in a common-property
research context. Study sites were purposively
selected to encompass a wide range of social,
economic, demographic, and resource governance
conditions (e.g., varying degrees of remoteness,
marine tenure, market influence, dependence on
marine resources, etc.). However, as a result of the
project's intent to integrate both socioeconomic and
ecological data, site selection was constrained
somewhat by the need to have comparable
ecological parameters at each site (coral reef habitat,
current regimes, exposure, etc.), access to SCUBA
facilities (although live onboard dive boats were
used to access two remote study sites in PNG and
two in Indonesia), and project goals of examining
several specific conservation sites of regional
importance (e.g., Bunaken and Kilu). Based on the
fact that the villages were not randomly selected, a
cautious approach to interpreting the results would
suggest that the conclusions drawn from this study
are not necessarily applicable outside of the study
sites.

Research was conducted over an one to three week
period per village using one to four trained local
assistants to aid in data collection. I used theoretical
and empirical research (e.g., Ostrom 1990, Carrier
and Carrier 1991, Agrawal 2001, Aswani 2002;
Pollnac and Johnson in press) and socioeconomic
assessment methodologies designed for coastal
communities (Pollnac 1998, Bunce et al. 2000,
Pollnac and Crawford 2000) to select indicators that
were expected to be related to marine resource
governance in the Indo-Pacific and that were also
feasible to collect during the limited research time
at each site. These were: population, distance to
markets, the percentage of fish bartered or sold in
the market, the type of settlement pattern,
dependence on marine resources, immigration, the
presence of conflicts over marine resources, and the
exclusivity of marine tenure regimes.
A combination of systematic household surveys (for
example, surveying every second or third
household), semi-structured interviews with key
informants (community leaders and resource users),
recording of oral histories, transect walks (walking
through the community with a local to identify and
verify issues), participant observations, descriptions
of daily and seasonal time-use, women’s focus
groups, and analyses of secondary sources such as
population censuses and fisheries records were all
used to gather information and triangulate results.
A total of 954 household surveys were collected.
Sampling within villages was based on a systematic
sample design, where a sampling fraction of every
ith house (e.g. 2nd, 3rd, 4th) was determined by

dividing the total village population by the sample
size (Henry 1990, de Vaus 1991). Variance from
the systematic sample was assumed to be equal to
the estimated variance based on a simple random
sample (Scheaffer et al. 1996). The number of
surveys per community ranged from 15-84 (Table
1), depending largely on the population of the
village, the number of available research assistants,
and the available time per site (this was influenced
by factors such as weather, the availability and
frequency of transportation to certain sites, and
budget requirements such as the cost of the boat
used to access remote sites).
The head of the household was interviewed. If the
head of the household was not available, the
household was revisited later. If the head of the
household was still not available, another adult from
the household was interviewed. The head of the
household could have been either a male or female.
In instances where it was appropriate, more than one
member of the household was interviewed to obtain
the most accurate information about specific
subjects (for example, if a female headed the house
but her eldest son was more knowledgeable about
the household's fishing activities and practices, then
he would be asked about the proportion of fish catch
bartered or sold).
Household surveys were used to gather the
following indicators: dependence on fishing,
immigration, population of the village, and the
percentage of fish sold in the market. Dependence

Fig. 1. Map of study sites.
on fishing was determined by having respondents
list all the occupations the household engaged in for
food or money. Respondents were then asked to rank
these activities in order of importance. Those who
regularly engaged in fishing estimated the
percentage of their fish catch sold or bartered.
Respondents were asked where they were from and
were considered immigrants if they came from
another village. Population was determined by: (1)
counting the number of houses, (2) determining the
average number of persons per household (adults
and children) from the household surveys, and (3)
multiplying this by the number of houses in the
community. This was thought to be more accurate
than relying on census information because the
census record in one community reported almost
twice as many houses as were actually counted.
Key informants were selected using non-probability
sampling techniques, including convenience
sampling (for example, a respondent may be
approached during resource use activities) or
snowball sampling (where community members
will suggest appropriate respondents) (Henry
1990). Between two and fifteen key informants were
interviewed per village. Key informants also
provided information on how exclusive the marine
tenure was. Based on the key informant interviews

Table 1. Summary of study sites.
Village Exclude
non-own-
ers
Settlement
pattern
Conflicts over
marine res-
ources
Population Distance
to market
(km)
%
immigrants
% of fish
bartered
or sold
% ranked
fishing as

primary occ-
upation
# of
household
surveys
Ahus yes nucleated yes 544 21 3.9 68 77 51
Andra yes nucleated yes 479 31 13.6 75 55 44
Gabagaba yes nucleated yes 1708 58 2.6 66 51 38
Kakarotan yes nucleated yes 730 100 2.0 24 27 48
Madina yes dispersed no 564 70 35.0 13 0 32
Muluk yes nucleated yes 333 69 7.5 44 5 41
Para yes dispersed yes 1513 46 27.0 69 56 59
Airbanua no dispersed no 687 45 32.6 52 12 43
Blongko no nucleated no 1332 32 51.9 44 8 77
Bunaken no dispersed yes 3122 16 20.5 72 37 73
Enuk no nucleated no 272 14 27.3 64 24 33
Fissoa no dispersed no 287 85 14.0 18 0 31
Kapitu no dispersed no 1791 60 57.1 66 18 84
Kilu no dispersed no 584 17 25.0 31 0 40

Kranget no nucleated no 2127 1 29.7 67 35 37
Mongol no nucleated no 493 0 64.3 35 18 28
Nusa Lik no nucleated no 273 1 46.2 69 54 15
Patanga no dispersed no 421 20 26.8 26 0 41
Riwo no dispersed no 1136 7 10.8 56 24 37
Tubuseria no nucleated no 5000 25 12.8 NA 18 61
Wadau no nucleated no 324 66 10.0 38 2 41
NA= not available
and confirmed observations, villages were
classified based on whether they: (1) practiced
highly exclusive marine tenure regimes in which
non-owners had to ask permission to access marine
resources (classified as "strong" or "highly
exclusive" marine tenure), or (2) had less exclusive
or no marine tenure regimes in which non-owners
regularly and openly accessed marine resources
without asking permission (classified as "weak" or
"less exclusive" marine tenure). Situations in which
neighboring villages (non-owners) had been
granted revocable use privileges and regularly
accessed marine resources were also classified as
less exclusive. Although this compartmentalization

of a wide range of marine tenure regimes into
comparable categories have undoubtedly lead to
overly simplistic interpretations of their true
complexities (Hviding 1996, McCay and Jentoft
1998), it is hoped that this will be outweighed by
the ability to examine how marine tenure is related
to different social and economic factors that can be
captured best through a broader-scale comparative
study.
Key informants and secondary sources provided
information on the presence of serious or significant
conflicts over marine resources. I defined conflicts
as intense verbal confrontations, use of violence, or
court cases. Communities that reported conflicts
over the previous 12 months or had court cases
pending were considered to have conflicts. Key
informants also provided information on the nearest
market where marine products were regularly
bought and sold. The distance from the village to
markets were measured on topographic maps and
nautical charts. Communities were grouped into two
types of settlement patterns: dispersed or nucleated.
Dispersed settlements were communities that were
spread out and contained distinct sub-villages that
were geographically separated. For example, the
community of Riwo in Madang, PNG, had sub-
villages on two separate islands and was thus
considered a dispersed settlement. Nucleated
settlements were communities that were relatively
contiguous.
Analyses

The socioeconomic characteristics of communities
that excluded all non-owners from accessing
resources within their tenure were compared to the
characteristics of communities where non-owners
were allowed to access marine resources. Four types
of analyses were performed to discern whether the
presence of highly exclusive marine tenure was
related to socioeconomic factors: the Mann Whitney
U test, Fisher's Exact test, effect size, and statistical
power.
The SPSS 11.01 statistical program was used to
determine statistical significance with the Mann-
Whitney U and Fisher's Exact tests. The Mann-
Whitney U test is a non-parametric alternative to
the T-test, which is used to test whether two samples
are independent (Siegel and Castellan 1988). The
Mann-Whitney U test was used to examine whether
ordinal or interval socioeconomic characteristics of
communities with highly exclusive tenure were
significantly different from communities with low
excludability. For example, I used the Mann
Whitney U test to compare the mean (rank of)
percentage of immigrants in communities with
highly exclusive marine tenure to the mean (rank
of) percentage of immigrants in communities with
weaker marine tenure. The frequency of
dichotomous data (i.e., settlement patterns and the
presence of conflicts) in communities with strong
marine tenure was compared to communities with
weak marine tenure using a Fisher’s Exact test. The
Fisher’s Exact test is a non-parametric analysis used
to discern whether two samples are independent
based on the frequency of observed responses in a
2 x 2 contingency table with small independent

samples (Siegel and Castellan 1988). Liberal p
values were accepted for determining statistical
significance (p<0.1), because this is an exploratory
analysis and, based on the moderate sample size of
21 villages, I did not want to exclude any variables
that might be important (i.e., I thought the
consequences of committing a type I error were
more grave than a type II error). To ensure national-
level differences were not driving any of the
patterns, significant differences between socioeconomic
characteristics for Indonesian and New Guinean
sites were tested for as well.
Effect size is a standardized measure of the strength
of the relationship between independent and
dependent variables (Vaske et al. 2002). The
Hedge's effect size was calculated as the difference
between the mean socioeconomic conditions of the
two groups (e.g., mean distance to market of the
communities that employed exclusive marine
tenure regimes minus the mean distance to market
of the communities that did not) divided by the
pooled standard deviation of both groups (Gliner et
al. 2001). Statistical power is the probability of
finding a statistically significant result when there
is a real effect in the population being studied (i.e.,
rejecting the null hypothesis when a research
hypothesis is true) (Cohen 1988). The power of
these relationships was calculated using Statistica
6.0 statistical program.

RESULTS
Socioeconomic characteristics of communities
The 21 communities varied considerably in the
socioeconomic and governance indicators (Table
1). Communities ranged from small hamlets with
only 272 people to large villages of 5,000 people.
The importance of fishing as a livelihood strategy
varied considerably in the communities examined.
The percentage of households that ranked fishing
as the primary occupation varied from 0-77%, with
a mean of 25%. There was also a considerable range
in the market influence (measured as distance to
market and the percentage of fish bartered or sold)
on the communities. Communities ranged from
0-100 km from markets. The mean distance to the
nearest regular market for marine products for all
sites was 37 km and the median distance was 32 km.
The percentage of fish bartered or sold ranged from
13-72% and had a mean of 50%. The percentage of
immigrants ranged from 2-64%, with a mean and
median of 25%. Twelve of the 21 sites were
nucleated settlements and only seven sites reported
conflicts over marine resources. Seven of the 21
communities regularly excluded non-owners from
accessing marine resources. High excludability
occurred in the Sangihe-Talaud part of North
Sulawesi, Indonesia ( Para and Kakarotan
communities), but not the southern communities on
or near the main island. In New Guinea, high
excludability was reported throughout the country.
Socioeconomic factors influencing marine

tenure
Only the population indicator differed significantly
between the sites in New Guinea and Indonesia. The
mean population for the New Guinean sites (970)
was significantly lower than the mean population
for the Indonesian sites (1530) (U = 17, p<0.05).
This lack of difference between countries for other
indicators suggests that national-level differences
in marine tenure or socioeconomic conditions did
not overly influence the analysis.
Four out of seven variables differed significantly
between villages with highly exclusive marine
tenure and those with less exclusive tenure regimes
(Table 2). The presence of conflicts over marine
resources was correlated to the presence of highly
exclusive marine tenure. The percentage of
immigrants was lower in communities with
exclusive marine tenure, the distance to market was
higher in communities with exclusive marine
tenure, and the percentage of households dependent
on fishing was higher in communities with
exclusive marine tenure (although this relationship
was only significant at the p<0.1 level). The large
effect size of these latter three relationships (d>0.93)
suggests that substantial relationships exists (Vaske
et al. 2002) (Table 2). No statistically significant
differences were found in settlement pattern,
population, or the percentage of fish sold in market
between communities with strong and weak marine
tenure. The effect size of the percentage of fish sold
in markets (d=0.1) was very low, suggesting a
minimal relationship (Vaske et al. 2002). However,
the power of this relationship was also very low

(0.05), so it would be difficult to detect differences.
The effect size of population (d=0.37) was
approaching a typical relationship found in the
social sciences (d=0.5) (Vaske et al. 2002), and the
power of this relationship was low (0.12) so the
effect of population may have been real but not
detectable with the sample size used. Note that effect
sizes and power are not computed for dichotomous
indicators (such as settlement pattern and conflicts).
DISCUSSION
This is one of the first studies to quantitatively
explore relationships between socioeconomic
factors and marine tenure over a large spatial scale
with a moderate sample size. This paper found that
communities with strong marine tenure were further
from markets, had lower migration, but had higher
dependence on fishing and conflicts over marine
resources. This study is an important compliment
to the more localized case studies and helps put such
research into a broader context. For example,
Aswani's comparison of marine tenure in the
Roviana and Vonavona lagoons in the Solomon
Islands provide a model for how socioeconomic and
historical factors can result in three marine tenure
patterns (Aswani 1999, 2002, Aswani and Hamilton
2004). Aswani's interpretations of how historical
processes, socioeconomic factors, and demographic
changes affect marine tenure in two coastal villages
in the Solomon Islands suggest market forces and
other exogenous pressures will not necessarily
transform CMT institutions into open-access
regimes (Aswani 1999, 2002). This study found that
the distance to the market was negatively related to

Table 2. Differences in socioeconomic characteristics of
communities with and without exclusive marine
tenure.
Variable Z score P Standardized
effect size (d)
Power
Distance to marketA -2.24 0.03** 0.97 0.51
ImmigrationA -2.16 0.03** 0.97 0.51
Fishing as primary occupationA -1.69 0.09* 0.93 0.50
ConflictsB NA 0.001*** NA NA
Percentage of fish
sold in marketA
-0.59 0.44 0.1 0.05
PopulationA 0 1 0.37 0.12
Settlement patternB NA 0.32 NA NA
AComputed using Mann Whitney U test.
BComputed using Fisher’s exact test.
*** Indicates a statistically significant relationship at alpha?=
0.001

** Indicates a statistically significant relationship at alpha?=
0.05
* Indicates a statistically significant relationship at alpha?= 0.1
NA= not applicable because the variables were dichotomous.
the exclusivity of marine tenure regimes, but
whether the fishery was market or subsistence-
based (measured in the percentage of fish bartered
or sold) was not significant. This suggests that the
strength of marine tenure institutions may be
undermined by connectivity to larger markets,
perhaps by introducing new ways of providing
credit and generating prestige (Agrawal 2002).
Commercial or market value for marine products,
however, may not necessarily diminish the strength
of tenure institutions.
To date, conclusions about how heterogeneity
influences the development and maintenance of
common property institutions remain inconclusive.
Heterogeneity (which can include the often
interrelated economic, cultural, religious, and
resource use differences in a society) has been
shown to have positive, negative, or minimal effects
on common property management (Ruttan and
Borgerhoff Mulder 1999, Glaesel 2000, Pollnac et
al. 2001, Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson 2002;
Pollnac and Johnson in press). This study found a
lower proportion of immigrants in communities
with highly exclusive marine tenure institutions,
which is consistent with notions of high social
capital being an important component of
maintaining common-property management regimes
(Pretty 2003). Cultural heterogeneity associated
with immigration may act to increase the transaction

costs of developing, maintaining, and enforcing
marine tenure regulations (Aswani and Hamilton
2004). Trust, reciprocal arrangements, and
consistent norms are important components of
social capital (Pretty and Smith 2004) that may be
affected by a high proportion of immigrants.
Likewise, immigrants may not perceive the rules,
processes, and authorities governing marine tenure
to be legitimate, and thus may not comply with
established rules (Sutinen and Kuperan 1999).
The relationship found between high dependence
on marine resources and the exclusivity of marine
tenure regimes is consistent with research on an
array of common pool resources that suggests a
positive relationship may exist between resource
dependence and participation in common property
arrangements (Lise 2000, Agrawal 2002, Zanetell
and Knuth 2004). Communities with high
dependence on marine resources may employ
exclusive marine tenure regimes to increase
livelihood security. For example, the Andra and
Ahus Island study sites in Manus, PNG, are small
infertile islands surrounded by large (>5 km2) reef
lagoons. Islanders have limited access to essential
terrestrial resources (e.g., vegetables and firewood)
and consequently their dependence on marine
resources is very high (Cinner et al. in press a).
These communities claim exclusive rights to marine

resources on the reefs surrounding their islands and
reefs along the coast of the main Manus Island
(Carrier 1987, Carrier and Carrier 1989; Cinner et
al. in press a), preventing mainland communities
from accessing marine resources. These exclusive
marine tenure regimes help to create an economic
monopoly on marine resources among fishing
communities (Malinowski 1935) and help to ensure
that island communities have desirable goods to sell
or trade in local markets (Carrier 1987; Cinner et al.
in press a), thereby improving their livelihood
security.
There are several possible explanations for the
relationship between the presence of conflicts and
exclusive marine tenure regimes. Some researchers
suggest that marine tenure regimes may have
developed in response to conflicts and may serve to
mitigate them (Pollnac 1984, Polunin 1984). On the
other hand, the complexity of use rights associated
with marine tenure institutions can cause them to be
continually challenged (Foale and Macintyre 2000).
In Indonesia, the lack of legal recognition of marine
tenure also seemed to cause conflicts over marine
resources. For example, while researching in Para
Island, North Sulawesi, long-standing tenure rights
were challenged by neighboring communities who
claimed that exclusive tenure rights were not legal
under Indonesia’s constitution and attempted to fish
in Para's fishing grounds. The Para community
responded by brandishing a firearm to chase off
fishers from the other community. Interrelationships
among indicators may also help to explain the
relationship between conflicts and exclusive marine
tenure regimes. For example, communities with
exclusive marine tenure regimes (with high

dependence on marine resources) used confiscation
of fishing equipment, intimidation, and even
violence to enforce their tenure. Communities with
lower dependence on marine resources may find the
additional livelihood security that might be gained
from employing exclusive marine tenure is not
worth engaging the conflicts associated with this
type of territory defense.
Several of the factors expected to be related to the
presence of CMT did not demonstrate significant
relationships, including population and settlement
patterns. In a review of the factors influencing the
sustainability of common property institutions,
Agrawal (2002) notes that debates concerning the
effect of population on common property
institutions are highly polarized. Results from this
study as to the effect of population on the presence
of exclusive marine tenure regimes are
inconclusive. The possibility exists that the sample
size used here was too small to detect differences in
these indicators, particularly considering the effect
size for population was approaching a moderate
effect. More interestingly though, is the possibility
that the populations in the communities studied
were too small to detect any effect. Gabagaba and
Para were two of the five largest communities in my
study (the 4th and 5th largest populations,
respectively), but employed CMT (Table 1). These
communities had populations of fewer than 2,000
and the largest population of any community studied
was 5,000 residents. Harkes and Novaczek (2002)
found that traditional management in Indonesia
(called Sasi) dies out in villages greater than 3,000
people. However, Evans et al. (1997) noted that Sasi

was present in a community larger than 14,000
people. Therefore, based on previous research, the
critical population size at which CMT may cease to
function effectively may not have been reached in
this study (or reached by only the two sites with
populations >3,000). The population levels of many
of the study sites were similar to many rural coastal
areas in the provinces studied (e.g., National
Statistics Office 2002a, b), however, urbanized
areas with high populations were not examined. An
interesting area of further inquiry would be to
examine whether or how communities with tens of
thousands of residents could support highly
exclusive marine tenure regimes. Aswani (2002),
and Aswani and Hamilton (2004) also speculated
that nucleated and dispersed settlement patterns
influenced whether and how communities in the
Solomon Islands could develop and maintain
marine tenure regimes. Although this study was not
able to explore in-depth ethnographic accounts of
settlement histories, no relationship was found
between settlement patterns and the strength of
marine tenure institutions. In the broader context,
this suggests that whether communities are
nucleated or dispersed may be less important than
other socioeconomic factors in maintaining marine
tenure regimes.
One of the initial concerns with this study was that

national or regional factors might overshadow the
village level factors examined. However, this did
not appear to be the case: there were few significant
differences in socioeconomic characteristics
between the two countries and several adjacent or
nearby communities reported different marine
tenure regimes, supporting the notion that marine
tenure can vary in response to village-level factors
and is not only a product of regional sociocultural
influences. For example, Madina and Fissoa were
nearby communities of a common language group,
but Madina had high excludability and Fissoa had
low excludability. Another potential concern was
that intersite variability in the resource might have
been very high, which could conceivably influence
the nature of the marine tenure institutions.
Incorporating the ecological criteria in site selection
provided a reasonable assurance that relatively little
variance existed in the resources within each tenure
(i.e., the tenure areas all contain comparable coral
reefs in similar ecological zones). Furthermore, we
can infer from other analyses of the resources within
these sites (Cinner et al. unpublished data; Cinner
et al. in press-b; Cinner and McClanahan
unpublished data) that many of the commercially
valuable species harvested within the tenure sites
such as trochus, beche de mer, and reef fish have
small home ranges (e.g., on the scale of hectares to
kilometers) (Kramer and Chapman 1999) congruent
to the scale of the tenure areas. Therefore, the
possible variance in resource conditions is expected
to have relatively little influence in the observed
tenure institutions.
Speculation

This study was able to tease out several indicators
that were of more importance than others and
provide qualitative descriptions of how these factors
may be related to the presence of CMT. The
limitations inherent in the non-random design of this
study mean these results apply only to these study
sites and should not be generalized to the wider
region. Keeping in mind the limitations of this
study's methodology, it is important to speculate on
whether and how these regimes will be able to adapt
and respond to changes in socioeconomic
conditions.
Marine tenure systems are dynamic institutions that,
through adaptation to changing scenarios, have
proven relatively robust to population pressures and
aspects of economic and political modernization
(Hviding 1998). However, Asia-Pacific is a region
undergoing profound social, economic, and
demographic changes (UNEP 2002), and there may
be social forces that marine tenure regimes are
unable to adapt to. Results from this study suggest
that socioeconomic changes that will increase
immigration, open new markets, and decrease
dependence on marine resources may influence the
ability of communities to employ or maintain
exclusive marine tenure regimes. Under these
scenarios, conservation and development strategies
that rely on high excludability in a community's
tenure may become challenged at their foundation.
Alternatively, results from this study also suggest
CMT may be somewhat resilient to other
socioeconomic factors such as population growth.
Highly exclusive CMT can operate in communities

with populations of 1,700, but strong CMT is related
to low levels of immigration. This suggests that high
endogenous population growth (i.e., not from
immigration) in smaller communities may not affect
the ability to employ viable marine tenure.
The next research challenge is to address the
applicability of these results to the wider region. A
random selection of villages that could be
considered representative of the region would be
desirable for future studies. Another research
priority is determining what specific aspects of these
variables influence marine tenure. For example,
high immigration may cause confusion over use
rights, disrupt traditional information exchange
mechanisms, and/or introduce new ideas that
challenge traditional practices. A better understanding
of how these factors influence marine tenure
regimes will allow development and conservation
organizations to target capacity building and other
activities to potentially increase the resilience of
Pacific conservation strategies against the forces of
social change.
Responses to this article can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art36/responses/
Acknowledgments:
I thank the people and leaders of all 21 villages for
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art36/responses/

allowing me to work in their communities. Thanks
to LIPI, the PNG National Research Council, PNG
Department of Environment and Conservation, and
the PNG National Fisheries Authority. The David
and Lucille Packard Foundation supported this
research through the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Thanks to S. Sutton, R. Arthur, J. Carrier, and three
anonymous reviewers for reviewing this manuscript
and providing extremely helpful and constructive
comments.
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http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art36/TitleAbstrac
tIntroductionMethodsData
collectionAnalysesResultsSocioeconomic characteristics of
communitiesSocioeconomic factors influencing marine
tenureDiscussionSpeculationResponses to this
articleAcknowledgmentsLiterature citedFigure1Table1Table2

THE MANAGEMENT
OF COMMON PROPERTY
RESOURCES:
Finding a Cooperative
Solution
Robert
W
hen will villagers come together to produce goods and ser-
vices that they all need but cannot provide individually? In
what circumstances will those who face a potential "tragedy
of the commons" be able to formulate rules by which the
tragedy is
averted?
Many writers on collective action are inclined to think that the
circumstances are very limited. They argue that people in a
situation

in which all could benefit from cooperation will be unlikely to
coop-
erate without an external agent to enforce agreements.
Likewise,
many theorists on property rights argue that common property
re-
sources will be overexploited as demand rises, so only private
enclo-
sure or state regulation stands a chance of preventing such a
result.1
This article offers a critique of some of the analytical arguments
used
to reach these conclusions and argues that they have been
inappro-
priately applied to certain types of village resources. It then
discusses
how to judge whether villagers will be able to sustain local
rules of
restrained access to common property resources and interprets
the
evidence from a study of forty-one villages in South India.
Clearly there can be no general presumption that collective
action

rather than privatization or state regulation will work: witness
the
frequency of degraded grazing commons, despoiled forests,
overex-
ploited groundwater, and depleted fisheries. But there are many
exam-
ples of villagers collectively managing property for long
periods. Pri-
vatization or state regulation is therefore not always essential.
A third
option—local collective action—needs to be taken seriously.
Because
© 1 9 8 7 The International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development/The World Bank 219
less public money is likely to be needed for local collective
action than
for either privatization or state regulation, it makes financial
sense to
establish local rules where circumstances permit.
Common

Property
and
Common-Pool
Resources
On a continuum of property rights, exclusive possession
(freehold)
is at one end. At the other is no property, as in ocean fisheries
or the
atmosphere. In between lies common property, where the rights
to
exploit a resource are held by people in conjunction with each
other.
These rights may take several forms: they may allow unlimited
exploi-
tation for those within a specified group (as happened in
commercial
fisheries under national jurisdiction) or they may stipulate
limits for
each user (as in most commercial fisheries today or as in
"stinting" of
a grazing commons).
Of course, the same type of resource may be exploited under a
variety of property rights. This article deals with those

resources that
might be called "common-pool" resources—a subset of public
goods,
as that term is used in economics. All public goods have the
property
that many people can use them at once, because exclusion is
difficult.
But some public goods yield infinite benefits, in the sense that
if A
uses more there is not less available for others (lighthouses and
weath-
er forecasts, for example). Common-pool resources, by contrast,
are
public goods with finite, or subtractive, benefits: if A uses
more, less
remains for others. Common-pool resources are therefore
potentially
subject to congestion, depletion, or degradation (Blomquist and
Os-
trom 1985; Randall 1983).
Groundwater is an obvious example of a common-pool resource.
It
can be used jointly, but use is subtractive. So when water is
scarce,

the groundwater table is likely to be depleted. Canal irrigation
water,
unfenced grazing land, and unfenced forest all meet the same
criteria.
These three resources—water, grazing, and trees—are vital to
the
livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries; the
question
of how to prevent their overexploitation as population grows is
im-
portant for development policy.
The prevailing answer runs as follows: when people are in a
situa-
tion where they could mutually benefit if all of them restrained
their
use of a common-pool resource, they will not do so unless an
external
agency enforces a suitable rule. Each individual has an
incentive to
ignore the social costs of his behavior for fear that others will
exploit
the resource before he does. As a result, the rate of aggregate
use
exceeds the physical or biological rate at which the resource

renews
itself (Ostrom 1985b).
This argument has been used to justify far-reaching proposals
for
changing the way that common-pool resources are managed
(Ostrom
1985a; Runge 1986). According to one school, full private
property
220 Research Observer 2, no. 2 (July 1987)
rights over the commons are a necessary condition for avoiding
over-
exploitation (Demsetz 1967; North and Thomas 1977; Johnson
1972;
Picardi and Siefert 1976). According to another, it is essential
to give
an external agency—usually the state—full authority to regulate
the
commons (Carruthers and Stoner 1981; Hardin 1968). For both
schools, the policy issue is simply how to achieve the desired
change

with the least opposition from those involved.
Defining the conditions under which users of common-pool re-
sources may voluntarily restrain their use can be considered as a
subproblem of the theory of collective action, also known as the
theory of public goods. Collective action is action by more than
one
person intended to achieve a common goal or satisfy a common
interest (that is, a goal or interest that cannot be obtained by an
individual alone). Achievement means that a public or
collective good
has been provided. The collective action might be setting and
observ-
ing a rule of restrained access to a common-pool resource, and
the
public good might be the sustainable exploitation that results.
One of the theories that has generated pessimism about the
viability
of collective action is Mancur Olson's "logic of collective
action"
(which might better be called the illogic of collective action, or
the
logic of collective inaction). His core proposition is this:
"unless there

is coercion or some other special device to make individuals act
in
their common interest, rational, self-interested individuals will
not act
to achieve their common or group interests" (Olson 1971,
emphasis
added). In other words, the theorem says that (a) voluntary
collective
action will not produce public goods, and (b) collective action
based
on selective (that is, excludable) penalties or rewards may
produce
public goods. Existing cases of common interest groups are thus
to be
explained by selective punishments or inducements.
My findings question this argument.
Theories
of Collective
Action
The conventional view of Indian villages is that they lack any
real

public realm. A number of men are regarded as "big men," in
some
sense first in the village. But there is no clearly defined social
domain
or institution separate from state authority where activities of a
public
nature are carried out, no center of community management
other
than the lowest levels of the state apparatus itself, and no
machinery
for raising resources for public (village) purposes other than
through
state-sanctioned taxation.
I analyzed forty-one villages in South India (Kurnool district,
An-
dhra Pradesh), thirty-one of which are irrigated from one or
another
of two large canal systems, while the other ten are dry. Despite
the
Indian
Villages
Robert Wade 221

conventional view to the contrary, a significant number of these
vil-
lages do provide public goods and services through local
arrange-
ments that have nothing to do with outside bodies, whether
govern-
ment or voluntary agencies.
The Public Kurnool district is semiarid; rainfall averages 620
millimeters a year
Realm m a u m m o d a l distribution. Population density
averages 105 people a
square kilometer (1971), up from 53 in 1870. Seventy percent of
the cultivated area is under foodcrops; only 12 percent is
irrigated.
Thirty-four percent of villages are supplied with electricity
(1971).
There is one tractor for every one or two irrigated villages, and
many
fewer in rainfed villages (1980). Most variation in real wage
rates is

contained within the range of 1.5 to 4.5 kilograms of foodgrain
a day.
In those villages that have a public realm, it consists of four
main
institutions: a village council (distinct from the statutory
Panchayat,
which is moribund in all the forty-one villages); a village
standing
fund (distinct from local government moneys); a group of
village
guards, employed by the council to protect crops from livestock
and
thieves; and a group of "common irrigators," employed by the
council
to distribute water to the rice fields and to help get more water
to the
village through the government-run canal. The council, and
through it
the field guards and common irrigators, are loosely accountable
to an
annual meeting of all the village's farmers.
The council also organizes the supply of many other public
goods

and services, such as repairing wells, ridding the village of
monkeys,
and making donations for a new primary school or a building
where
sick animals can be treated, and so on. All these services except
water
distribution are financed from the village standing fund, for
which the
council raises money in a variety of ways.
Take K village as an example. Its population is just over 3,000.
The
council has about nine members (the number is fixed for any
one year,
but varies slightly from year to year). It has authority to make
deci-
sions affecting all the village. The village's standing fund
spends about
Rs 10,000 a year (in an economy where a male agricultural
laborer
gets Rs 4 a day outside of seasonal peaks). The standing fund
pays the
salaries of the field guards. Four are employed full-time for
most of
the year, and another two to four are added as the harvest

approach-
es. About twelve common irrigators are employed for up to two
and a
half months, for about 1,200 acres of first-season rice. At
harvest
the common irrigators supplement the field guards in protecting
the
crops.
In the sample of thirty-one canal-irrigated villages, eight have
all
four of the main corporate institutions—council, fund, field
guards,
and common irrigators; eleven have some but not all; and
twelve have
none. These proportions are not necessarily typical of the whole
area,
since the sample was drawn not randomly but with an eye to
ease of
access and a representative range of water arrangements.

Among the
ten dry villages, eight have field guards; six have a village
council; and
six have a village fund.
The impetus for central (village) control comes primarily from
two
distinct sources of social conflict and production loss.
Trespassing
animals and thieves are one. Unrestrained use of irrigation
water is
the other. These are discussed in turn, using K village as an
example.
K has a population density of 159 people a square kilometer.
With
this density goes a farming system of annual cropping (at least
one
crop on each plot each year) and multiple cropping where
irrigation
permits. Little waste or yearly fallow land is left; the village
has no
common, in the sense of a large area available for common
grazing
for a year or more. But oxen and buffalo are needed for traction,

and
they must be fed. During the growing season they graze close to
the
crops, on the verges or on small areas of fallow, which are
treated as
commons. Because fields are not fenced, the animals must be
tethered
or shepherded. But the incentives for careful shepherding or
tethering
are asymmetrical—I may not be unhappy to see my animals get
fat on
your grain. The rationale of the field guards is to make the
incentives
less asymmetrical. During the medieval and early modern period
in
Europe, the open-field system solved the problem primarily by
regu-
lating the cropping; these Indian villagers solve it mainly by
regulating
the livestock.
If the field guards catch an animal grazing a standing crop, they
take it to the village pound, where it remains until its owner
pays a
fine. If just a few animals are involved, the fine is a flat rate—

Rs 2 per
animal during the day, Rs 4 at night. The rate is set by the
council;
the field guards collect and keep the fine, dividing it equally
among
themselves. If many animals are involved, the council uses its
discre-
tion. The fine may run into hundreds of rupees. The field guards
collect it, keep 25 percent, and hand the rest over to the
standing
fund. (In most villages the owner of the damaged crop is not
compen-
sated.) The field guards do not enforce a stinting. The decision
about
how many animals to own and graze is left to each individual.
After the harvest of most of the rainfed crops in February, large
areas of stubble become available for grazing. (Even in irrigated
vil-
lages, the area under rainfed crops is generally greater than the
irri-
gated area.) Each landowner could reserve his stubble for his
own
animals or those he chose to allow. He could do so by posting
guards

around each field or by fencing. But the cost of either method—
the
cost of privatizing the stubble—is very high; all the more so as
each
The
Management
of Grazing
Robert Wade 223
landowner tends to have his holding divided into several
scattered
plots (McCloskey 1975). So, as in the open-field system of
Europe, the
stubble is put in common; private rights to the product of the
land
extend only to the crop, not to the crop residues.
How, in the "corporate" villages, is this commons managed?
Since
the village's own stock of animals is adjusted to the availability

of
year-round grazing, after the harvest it has some surplus
grazing,
which it could rent out to herdsmen from drier parts of the
district.
The market for grazing and manure is organized in two ways. In
one system, a small group of herders bargains with the council
for
exclusive access to the village's grazing. The bargain states how
many
sheep and goats they will bring, when they will come, how long
they
will stay, and how much they will pay for the franchise. Once
the
bargain is made, those herders have exclusive claim to the
village's
grazing, and others can enter only as some leave. Their flocks
graze
over the stubble by day. By night, when the animals drop most
of
their manure, they are put on the plots of particular landowners,
who
pay them an agreed nightly rate per animal. So the herders as a
group

pay the village a lump sum for access to the commons; and they
individually get back part of what they pay through the sale of
manure.
The second method (used in K, among others) is more complex.
Again, a group of herders obtains exclusive access. But instead
of a
group rent, an auction is held regularly (every four days in K) to
decide who will have each flock on his land at night up to the
next
auction. The auction is arranged by the village council. Half the
winning bid (for each flock) is then paid to the herder, and half
goes
to the village fund. In K, some 9,000 to 13,000 animals
commonly
enter the village for about six weeks, and the village fund gets
about
Rs 5,000 in return.
Such a large number of animals entering the village when some
crops (mainly the irrigated ones) are still standing poses a
serious risk
of loss for those crop owners. The response is to tighten the
regula-
tion of the livestock in two ways. One is to stipulate rules for

both
herder and landowner. These rules are read out at the first
auction of
the year and may be read out again if infringed. They are worth
repeating here because they do not fit easily with the view that
Indian
villagers cannot, so to speak, get their act together (although
they
may seem unremarkable compared with the elaborate by-laws of
open-field villages in medieval England cited in Ault 1973).
For the herder:
• He must take the flock to the designated field by 6:30 p.m.
and keep
it there until 8:00 a.m.
• He must not allow the flock to graze standing crops.
2 2 4 Research Observer 2, no. 2 (July 1987)
• He must deposit with the council half the money paid to him
for

the first "turn" (four nights); if he leaves before completing four
turns (sixteen nights), he forfeits his deposit to the village fund.
(This is to discourage herders from leaving before the farmers
have
had their fields manured and cleared of stubble.)
• He must stay within the village boundary; if the farmer asks
him to
go to a field outside he must refuse.
For the farmer:
• He must keep the flock within the village boundary.
• If he prefers to pay the fund or the herder in kind rather than
cash,
he must make the conversion at the rate (in early 1980) of Rs
1.25
per measure of hybrid sorghum or Rs 1.50 of "local" sorghum.
• To help the herder guard the flock at night, he must provide
two
men for each 2,000 head. Hired guards must be paid Rs 3 a
night,
or the equivalent in grain. (This is to prevent the farmer from

sending nonablebodied men, who could be paid less.)
Such rules are not self-enforcing. Any one farmer would have
an
incentive to cheat, by not providing the stipulated number of
guards
or by bringing the flock to a field outside the village boundary.
So joint regulation is carried further by means of village-
appoint-
ed guards.
To pay the guards, it would be possible for the council to set a
flat
rate—so much per cultivated acre—which each landowner had
to
pay. But such an arrangement would be vulnerable to free
riding: a
farmer could delay payment indefinitely, expecting that others
would
not similarly delay. In most villages this free rider problem is
avoided
by raising the money for the guards' salaries from a collective
source.
The chief source is the money received from the sale of the
grazing

franchise, which is generally enough to pay for a semipermanent
team
of field guards.
The "corporate" irrigated villages tend to have several other
sources of revenue for the standing fund, based mostly on the
sale of
council-sanctioned franchises. In addition to the grazing
franchise, a
franchise to sell liquor is a valuable source of revenue. By law
the
franchise is sold in a government-run auction. However, the
corporate
villages usually send just one person from their village, thus
acquiring
the franchise at the lowest price. They then auction it within the
village
which, with competition, produces a higher price. The
difference be-
tween the two prices goes to the village fund. Or again, one
village in
the sample has an irrigation tank (a small reservoir). Each year
the
council stocks it with fingerlings, and later in the year auctions
the

franchise to catch the fish, the money going to the fund. Some
villages
auction the right to collect a commission on all their grain sales.
Robert Wade 2 2 5
The
Management
of Irrigation
Any irrigation system that experiences water shortages poses an
inherent conflict between farmers upstream and those
downstream.
Those upstream have first access, and their supply is relatively
abun-
dant; how much they take determines how much the
downstreamers
will get. Without some rules about access, continual conflicts
are
likely.
The villages in the sample are irrigated from large, government-
run

canals and grow rice in the first (wet) season. The rice is
transplanted
in late July or early August and harvested in December and
January.
By the end of September the heavy rains have normally stopped,
so
the crop depends on canal water. Common irrigators are then
ap-
pointed to allocate the scarce and fluctuating supply of canal
water
over the village's land and also to procure, by various means,
more
water from the government-run supply (which may include
surrepti-
tiously blocking the outlets of upstream villages).
This arrangement is notable in two respects. First, the common
irrigators do not decide how much land will make a claim to the
irrigation water; that is left to individual farmers (as are
decisions
about how many animals to graze). Second, however, once the
com-
mon irrigators are appointed, they take important decisions out
of the
hands of individual farmers, in the name of a villagewide

authority.
The criterion used by the common irrigators is "adequately wet-
ted." Each field is entitled to be adequately wetted, but it cannot
get
more water until the other fields downstream from that outlet
(most
villages have several outlets) have also been adequately wetted.
This
criterion is quite different from the open access, first-come-
first-served
rule that prevails before the common irrigators are appointed.
The
criterion is also quite different from the approach in northwest
India,
where canal water is always scarce; there during a fixed period
of the
week each field is entitled to draw whatever water is flowing in
the
watercourse, but cannot draw more until the same time the
following
week.
The difference in approach presumably derives from the
difference

between rice (in Andhra Pradesh) and other crops (in the
Northwest).
Rice is more adversely affected than other crops if the water
available
is less than potential evapotranspiration; however, rice does not
suffer
from excessive irrigation. As a result, one farmer's
overgenerous irri-
gation of a rice crop can cause drastic yield reductions for
others.
Therefore, whereas the Northwest's "fixed time per acre"
method is
self-policing—the next farmer in line knows exactly when his
turn
should start—the judgment of adequate wetting cannot be left to
each
irrigator and must be made by people answerable to a
villagewide
authority.
Farmers who steal water—who try to influence how much water

they get once the common irrigators have been appointed—are
liable
to be fined by the council. During a drought, the fines may be
Rs 20
to 50 each time, but the main penalty is the stigma of being
dressed-
down in front of the council.
The common irrigators are paid at harvest time, not from the
village fund but by means of a levy—so much per irrigated
acre—on
each irrigator. The rate is set by the council. Is this not
vulnerable to
free riding? The short answer is no, because the levy is in kind
rather
than cash and is made at the harvest—the one time of the year
when
every farmer has no excuse to delay payment in kind. More
impor-
tant, common irrigators who are not paid one year can damage
the
nonpayer the next year. The withdrawal of common irrigator
services
from one individual's land has graver implications than does the

withdrawal of field-guarding services.
This article has so far discussed how things are done in the
corpo-
rate villages, those with all or most of the four corporate
institutions.
Although most of the detailed information comes from K
village, the
organization of the four key institutions varies little from
village to
village, even though they were not imposed from above.
Many villages, however, have no corporate organization: no
village
council, no standing fund, no common irrigators, and no
village-
appointed guards (though private landowners may hire their
own,
sometimes forming small groups to do so). In these villages the
rule of
open access to canal water applies, although informal turn-
sharing
may develop along some watercourses. And uncoordinated
groups of
herders may enter a village's land at will, or with the permission

of
the headman, and will negotiate with individual farmers about
where
they fold their flocks at night.
Why the difference between the corporate and uncorporate
villages?
The first point is that the corporate irrigated villages are located
toward the tail-end of an irrigation distributary (roughly, the
bottom
one-third of its length; typical distributaries are ten miles long).
The
second point is that the corporate dry villages tend to be located
in
areas with black, rather than red, soil. The third point is that, in
the
semiarid tropics generally, black soil areas tend to be lower
down a
watershed than red soil areas. So irrigated villages toward the
tail-end
of a distributary also tend to have a higher proportion of black
soils.
Black soils are more water-retentive than red soils, allowing a
wider

range of rainfed crops and a higher yield—and hence a more
abun-
dant and varied supply of stubble. With unrestrained access, too
many
animals might come in, damaging the soil. Moreover, the risks
of crop
loss are higher: with the more varied cropping pattern of black
soils,
large areas of stubble from the early-harvested crops will
become
The Ecological
Basis of
Common
Property
Rules
Robert Wade 227
available when other crops are still standing. This provides the
impe-

tus to arrange for the fields to be guarded, which can be
financed by
the herders' willingness to pay for the better grazing on black
soil.
In theory, the power structure of the village might be such that
collective action was impossible because it was not supported
by a
few key households with land close to the canal. In practice,
however,
holdings are typically scattered in small parcels, partly because
land-
owners want to diversify risk. A family with land close to one
irriga-
tion outlet may have another plot close to the tail-end of a block
fed
from another outlet. This greatly helps the consensus on the
need for
rules and joint regulation.
Areas of rainfed cultivation higher up a distributory have more
red
soil, which dries out sooner after the rains stop. They therefore
have
less stubble, so herders are less interested in grazing there. The

higher
irrigated areas tend to be under rice in both seasons, but sheep
and
goat manure is wanted mainly for other crops. So both the
demand
and supply of animals and grazing is less in the higher
villages—and
canal water there is more plentiful and reliable. It is in villages
lower
down a watershed that the potential for conflict is greatest. The
evidence of my sample suggests that these lower villages are
very
likely to have an organized public domain, with rules on the use
of
water and grazing and the provision of other public goods.
How effective are the rules of restrained access in changing the
way
that resources are used? This question is difficult to answer,
because it
is hard to find a pair of similar villages, one with corporate
institu-
tions, one without. All one can say with confidence is that both
production and equity are greater where rules and institutions
apply

than they would have been had the same villages been
unorganized.
Where individual benefits from joint action are high, joint
action is
likely to be forthcoming.
This is not to say that the temptation for self-interested
individuals
to go for immediate gain is minor. The need to respond to the
free
rider problem affects a village's organization. The typical
council has
developed formidable arrangements for enforcing the rules,
precisely
to convince each individual that his fellow villagers will
probably
abide by the rules, so that if he too does so he will not be the
sucker
(Runge 1984). These expectations are reinforced by the social
compo-
sition of the council, an elite body with no pretense at
representation.
Councils have increased their authority with the passage of
time: in
all these villages, they have been operating for several decades

at least.
Lessons What of Olson's argument? One of its main weaknesses
is a lack of
for Theory attention to the size and nature of the collective
benefit.1 It concen-
trates instead on the size of the selective benefits and costs,
those that
2 2 8 Research Observer 2, no. 2 (J"'y 1987)
can discriminate between people according to whether or not
they
help to provide the public good. It simply assumes the net
collective
benefit to be high, since free riders must by definition be among
those
who value the public good highly. So the argument is geared to
interpret noncooperation as evidence for the free rider
hypothesis,
rather than for the hypothesis of low collective benefit. In these
Indian

villages, however, cooperation and noncooperation are
explained in
terms of high and low collective benefit, as indicated by
downstream
or upstream location on a water supply channel and by black or
red
soils. The presence or absence of selective punishments has
little
bearing on the variation among villages.
Another qualification to Olson concerns the source of control
and
punishment. Olson's key proposition—that examples of
collective ac-
tion groups can be explained as the response to selective
punishments
or rewards—differs from the more conventional notion that joint
be-
havior is related to the presence of an external enforcer of
agreements.
Olson is not entirely clear on whether the source of selective
punish-
ment or reward is inside the group or outside. But he can be
read to
mean that the penalties must be organized from outside the

group.
This notion is contradicted by my findings and those of many
others. There are many examples where villagers have
established
rules, monitored the conditions of the commons, checked for
cheat-
ing, and assigned punishment.3 There are also, of course, many
more
examples where attempts to do so have failed; in the absence of
state
regulation or private property, the commons has then
degenerated.
But the successful examples of local rules show that regulation
of the
commons does not have to be imposed from outside (McKean
1984;
Ostrom 1986).
Where Olson and other pessimists about collective action are
surely
right is in the need for coercion to back up agreements. Their
empha-
sis on the difficulties of voluntary collective action is a useful
counter

to the simple optimism of those who believe that community
develop-
ment projects, people's participation, water users' associations,
and
the like are mainly a matter of teaching people about their real
common interests or promoting values that are less
individualistic. On
the contrary, rules that make people do what they may not
imme-
diately want to do are a necessary ingredient of managing
common
resources, so that while free riding tendencies may remain, they
need
not destroy the organization.
The voluntariness of collective action, therefore, has to be
consid-
ered as a constitutional issue and as a matter of action.
Constitution-
ally, people can agree on a set of rules of restrained access or
financial
contributions, their incentive to do so being prospective net
collective
benefit. In action, compliance with the rules must also be
mainly

voluntary, not the result of a calculus of evasion and
punishment. But
Robert Wade 2 2 9
the rules must be backed by a system of punishment, which
helps to
assure each individual that if he follows the rules he will not be
cheated, and which at times of crisis can directly deter
violations.4
Lessons
for
Organiza tional
Design
If an outside authority wanted to encourage the establishment of
some cooperative bodies, how would it choose to design them?
One
lesson is that, in the South Indian context at least, villagers are
likely
to follow joint rules and arrangements only to achieve intensely
felt

needs that could not be met by individual action (Johnston and
Clark
1982). These are likely to involve primarily the defense of
production
(avoidance of crop or animal loss), secondarily the enhancement
of
income, and last by a long way, education, nutrition, health, and
civic
consciousness. The opportunities for avoiding losses or
boosting in-
come by collective action will be taken only if the losses or
gains are
large. In my irrigated villages, corporate organization to
manage com-
mon property is found, with barely an exception, only toward
the
tail-ends of distributaries.
The second lesson is that corporate organizations, to be
effective,
should be based on existing structures of authority. In practice,
this
means that the council will be dominated by the local elite,
which is a
disturbing conclusion for democrats and egalitarians. But rules

made
by the majority of villagers would carry little legitimacy in the
eyes of
the powerful. More important, the effectiveness of a council
depends
on its councillors all having a substantial private interest in
seeing
that it works, and that interest is greater the larger a person's
land-
holding (provided holdings are in scattered parcels). Moreover,
the
tendency of the nonelite to cheat can be checked by the
sanctions of
the village's power structure. Without these wider sanctions, the
coun-
cil's formal penalties would probably be ineffectual. This point
tends
to be overlooked in the public choice literature because it
assumes a
context of free and equal individuals.
If the elite runs the council, will it not become another
instrument
of exploitation? That is not so in these Indian villages, which
reflects

the third design lesson: the council is concerned only with
nonpriva-
tizable benefits. It is not involved in supplying inputs other than
water. It is not involved in settling disputes unrelated to
husbandry or
water. It does not try to compensate the owners of animal-
damaged
crops, for that would create conflict about privatizable value. In
K
village, the council once tried to intervene in the allocation of a
privatizable good (rationed sugar): the conflicts over who got it
be-
came so strong that the council almost ceased to function.
The fourth lesson is that a council should take on less vital
func-
tions (well repairing, monkey catching, and so on) only when it
is
very good at the core (income-defending or income-enhancing)
activi-

ties. Not all those councils that are organized to do the
essentials also
do much less-essential work.
The fifth lesson is to keep the techniques of calculation and
control
simple. Some record keeping and accountability are needed, so
as to
"institutionalize suspicion," in Ronald Dore's phrase (1971). But
the
accountability procedures are straightforward in these Indian
villages.
There is an annual general meeting of all farmers to discuss the
forth-
coming season, ratify the new council, and receive nominations
for
guards. The records on standing fund income and expenditure
are
simple and are read out at the general meeting. Meetings of the
council
are held in the open, and anyone who passes can listen on the
fringes.
One specific lesson is that, where water users' associations are
deliberately fostered, the right unit of organization is usually

the
whole village. Attempts to form a water users' association
around
each canal outlet are likely to be futile if such a group of
farmers does
not already do other things together. The group will simply not
contain enough authority. Yet many programs for irrigation
improve-
ment in India assume that the natural unit of organization is the
outlet or some other hydrologically defined unit.
More generally, what can be said about the conditions on which
successful collective action depends? In the extreme case—
many users,
unclear boundaries of the common, resources, people scattered
over a
large area, rules easy to break—degradation of the commons can
confidently be expected as demand increases, and privatization
or
state regulation may be the only options. The likelihood of
successful
collective action therefore depends on the following:5
• Resources. The smaller and more clearly defined the
boundaries of

the common resources, the greater the chances of success.
• Technology. The higher the costs of exclusion technology
(such as
fencing), the better the chances of success.
• Relation between resources and users
Location: The greater the overlap between the location of the
common-pool resources and the residence of the users, the
greater
the chances of success.
Users' demands: The greater the demands (up to a limit) and the
more vital the resource for survival, the greater the chances of
success.
Users' knowledge: The more users know about sustainable
yields,
the greater the chances of success.
• Characteristics of users
Size: The smaller the number of users, the better the chances of
success. However, there is a minimum number below which the

tasks able to be performed by such a small group cease to be
meaningful.
Robert Vfftule 231
Boundaries: The more clearly defined the boundaries of the
group,
the better the chances of success.
Relative power of subgroups: The more powerful are those who
benefit from retaining the commons and the weaker are those
who
favor enclosing private property, the better the chances of
success.
Existing arrangements for discussion of common problems: The
more developed such arrangements are, the greater the chances
of success.
Extent to which users are bound by mutual obligation: The more
concerned people are about their social reputations, the better
the
chances of success.

• Noticeability. The more noticeable is cheating on agreements,
the
better the chances of success. Noticeability is a function partly
of
how clearly defined are the resource boundaries, how near they
are
to users' residences, and how large is the group of users.
• Relation between users and the state. The less the state can or
wishes to undermine locally based authorities and the less it can
enforce private property rights effectively, the better the
chances of
success.
As the list implies, there can be no presumption that collective
action will generally work—any more than there can be a
presump-
tion that private property or state regulation will generally
work. My
argument is only that (a) the propensity to descend into anarchy
or
destruction is neither as strong nor as general as mainstream
collective
action theory implies and (b) that where circumstances look

promis-
ing for collective action government officials should treat this
option
as seriously as the other two.
The government can help these local systems by providing a
legal
framework and perhaps technical assistance. The legal
framework
should enable village organizations to obtain legally
enforceable re-
cognition of their identity and rights and to call upon the state
as an
enforcer of last resort (Korten, forthcoming). Obvious though it
may
sound, few governments in Asia have given much attention to
this
task, at least with respect to rural (as distinct from modern
urban)
organizations. If governments did more, their efforts would
widen the
range of situations in which locally based common property
regimes
could be expected to work.

Abstract When will villagers come together to supply
themselves with goods and services that
they all need but could not provide for themselves individually?
Can locally based
collective action be a viable way to manage common property
resources? Many writers
on collective action and common property are pessimistic about
the ability of people
who face problems with common property resources to organize
sustainable patterns
of use for themselves. Some writers favor privatization of the
commons as the only viable
solution; others, the imposition of state regulation. This article
shows, with reference
2 3 2 Research Observer 2, no. 2 (July 1987)
to Mancur Olson's "logic of collective action," that the
analytical basis for this
pessimism is weak for the village-based use of common
property resources. There can
thus be no general presumption that collective action will fail in
the management of

common property resources, any more than there can be a
general presumption that it
will work. The article suggests that the chances of success
through collective action
depend on the characteristics of the resources, the user group,
and group-state relations.
This article is based on a forthcoming book, Village Republics:
Economic Conditions NotCS
for Collective Action in South India, Cambridge University
Press. I am grateful to Hans
Binswanger, Richard Kimber, Ford Runge, and especially Elinor
Ostrom for discussions
on various points of the argument.
1. For references, see citations later in text.
2. It is not that Olson says or implies that the size of the
collective net benefit is
irrelevant; he simply does not give it much attention.
3. For example, McKean (1984) on Japan; Gilles and Jamtgaard
(1981) on Peru;
Campbell and Godoy (1985) on the Andes; Hitchcock (1980),
Peters (1983), and

Thomsen (1980) on Africa; and Netting (1978) on Switzerland.
See also Runge (1987)
and Ostrom (1985b).
4. This argument is in line with some of the early writings in
public choice theory,
notably Buchanan and Tullock (1962) and Ostrom (1968). Later
work in the public
choice tradition has tended to focus too much on the issue of
financial contributions.
I have not discussed here the issue of group size. Olson's
celebrated theorem, stated
without qualification early in his book, is later restricted to
large groups in a taxonomy
of small, intermediate, and large. He says little about how to
distinguish the three types
of groups in practice, but he might argue that the groups under
discussion here are
intermediate groups and therefore outside the scope of his
argument.
5: See also Ostrom (1985b), the starting point of my own
formulation.

Ault, W. 1973. Open-field Farming in Medieval England: A
Study of Village By-laws.
London: Allen and Unwin.
Blomquist, W., and E. Ostrom. 1985. "Institutional Capacity
and the Resolution of a
Commons Dilemma." Policy Studies Review 5, no. 2: 383-93.
Buchanan, J., and G. Tullock. 1962. The Calculus of Consent.
Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press.
Campbell, Bruce, and R. Godoy. 1985. "Common-field
Agriculture: The Andes and
Medieval England Compared." Queens University of Belfast,
Geography Department.
Carruthers, I., and R. Stoner. 1981. Economic Aspects and
Policy Issues in Groundwater
Development. World Bank Staff Working Paper 496.
Washington, D.C.
Demsetz, H. 1967. "Toward a Theory of Property Rights."
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