From restitution to revival: A case of commons re-establishment and restitution in Slovenia

Tine Premrl, Andrej Udovč, Nevenka Bogataj and Janez Krč

Forest Policy and Economics, 2015, vol. 59, issue C, 19-26

Abstract: Agrarian commons in Slovenia share a common historical origin with other commons from Central European countries. In the twentieth century, commons in some of these countries experienced the process of abolishing traditional management institutions and nationalising their property. During the transitional period in the 1990s, one third of former agrarian commons were re-established and restituted in Slovenia. In this paper, we evaluate the response of three different types of agrarian commons (forest, pasture and agriculture commons) from three different landscapes (Alps, Pannonia and Mediterranean) in the context of the legal framework in which the commons were restituted. We use the upgraded version of Ostrom's design principles to evaluate the ability of the legal framework to enable the robustness of these historical institutions. It is not the first time that governments misunderstood commons and tried to impose rules which are not common to the commons. In the case of Slovenian agrarian commons, we found that the legal framework is too rigid for re-established agrarian commons and thus affects their efficiency in resource governance. Without changes in the legal framework, the present situation can lead to the decay of these historical institutions.

Keywords: Re-establishment; Restitution; Transition; Legal framework; Commons; Design principles; Robustness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934115300046
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:59:y:2015:i:c:p:19-26

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2015.05.004

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().