Editorial: Institutional adaptation and transformation for climate resilience

Taking sanctioning seriously: The impact of sanctions on the resilience of historical commons in Europe

In their studies of collective exploitation of common-pool resources, Ostrom and other scholars have stressed the importance of sanctioning as an essential method for preventing overuse and, eventually, the collapse of commons. However, most of the available evidence is based on data covering a relatively small period in history, and thus...

Comparisons of historical Dutch commons inform about the long-term dynamics of social-ecological systems

Human societies and natural ecosystems are under threat by growing populations, overexploitation of natural resources and climate change. This calls for more sustainable utilization of resources based on past experiences and insights from many different disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches to studies of historical commons have potential to...

Institutional form versus function in a common property context: The credibility thesis tested through an agent-based model

A key debate in the study on land, housing and natural resources revolves around the notion that general institutional forms (such as private, common, public, and likewise formal property rights) lead to a certain institutional performance (as may be expressed in terms of prices, transaction costs or sustainability). However, a modest, yet,...

Long-Term Dynamics of Institutions: Using ABM as a Complementary Tool to Support Theory Development in Historical Studies

Historical data are valuable resources for providing insights into general sociological patterns in the past. How-ever, these data often inform us at the macro-level of analysis but not about the role of individuals’ behaviours in the emergence of long-term patterns. Therefore, it is difficult to infer ‘how’ and ‘why’ certain patterns emerged in...

The Role of Wealth Inequality on Collective Action for Management of Common Pool Resource

Shared patterns in long-term dynamics of commons as institutions for collective action

We present an analysis of regulatory activities in historical commons offering a unique picture of their long-term institutional dynamics. The analysis took into account almost 3,800 regulatory activities in eighteen European commons in two countries across seven centuries. Despite differences in time and space, we found a shared pattern...

Eco-evolutionary perspectives on emergence, dispersion and dissolution of historical Dutch commons

Historical commons represent self-governed governance regimes that regulate the use and management of natural and man-made shared resources. Despite growing scientific interests, analyses of commons evolution and temporal dynamics are rare and drivers of change (birth, adaptation, dissolution) remain obscure. We apply an interdisciplinary...

Managing the commons: A simple model of the emergence of institutions through collective action

In this paper we present an abstract replication of institutional emergence patterns observed in common pool resource (CPR) problems. We used the ADICO grammar of institutions as the basic structure to model both users’ strategies and institutions. Through an evolutionary process, users modify their behaviours and eventually establish a...