Abstract:
Classic scholars Hardin and Ostrom emerged with counter-traditions to each other in favor of private and communal natural resource management institutions respectively. In these premises, Hardin argues that it is not possible for local people cooperatively to manage a common resource sustainably because individuals in the community will always be driven by the rationale of ensuring more of personal gains at the expense of others. And, according to him, because every individual is driven by the same rationality the common will ultimately collapse, the state he calls “tragedy of the commons”. On the contrary, Ostrom opposes Hardin by arguing that the community has the power of devising rules systems that enable it to manage the common sustainably. Impliedly, the two scholars portray that either communal or private institutions will prevail at specific spaces of time and place but not both. In this article, I challenge this contention using four case studies that have substantiated the use of both communal and private institutions by the same social players at different time-space, and/or co-existence of both communal and private institutions at the same spaces of time and/or place.
