Bromley, Daniel W. (1990) The Commons, Property, and Common Property Regimes

Conference: Presented at "Designing Sustainability on the Commons," the first annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Duke University, September 27-30, 1990.

Abstract: "The literature on common property has been hampered by a failure of writers to begin their analysis with a clear concept of property and property rights. In this paper, property concepts will be made clear so that one can then undertake to assess natural resource management regimes as instances of certain property arrangements. Those management regimes will be seen to represent property regimes first and foremost. Additionally, a property regime will be seen to be an authority system that defines individuals with respect to other individuals in relation to objects capable of yielding benefit streams over time. Property is the claim to that benefit stream, rights and duties define the relationship of diverse individuals to each other with respect to that institutional structure that gives coherence and predictability to human associations -- whether families, clans, tribes, villages, or nation states."