Open access and the sovereign commons: A political ecology of pastoral land tenure

Roy Behnke

Land Use Policy, 2018, vol. 76, issue C, 708-718

Abstract: Conventional common property theory does not accurately depict the institutional arrangements that characterize many indigenous pastoral tenure systems in Africa and Asia, nor does it explain why these systems break down when exposed to markets and centralized government control. These theoretical anomalies are caused in large measure by the distinctive ways pastoralists regulate access to resources. The erratic and extensive nature of rangeland resources favours free movement to exploit fluctuations in resource availability and this promotes a degree of open access. In ungoverned or weakly governed areas, access is also regulated by political competition between sovereign territorial groups. External government control renders redundant the internal solidarity of these groups, which fragment rather than becoming officially sanctioned common property regimes. Market exposure exacerbates this process. The development of class interests and private property marks the emergence in these societies of the economy as a distinct sphere of social organization. Grounded in classical economic theory that presumes the prior existence of the economy, common property theory is ill equipped to comprehend this transition.

Keywords: Common property; Pastoralism; Land tenure; Ideal free distribution; Open access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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/S0264837717305641
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:lauspo:v:76:y:2018:i:c:p:708-718

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.02.054

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().