Toward a Political Economy of the Commons: Simple Rules for Sustainability (New Thinking in Political Economy series) - Hardcover

Cai, Meina; Murtazashvili, Ilia; Brick Murtazashvili, Jennifer; Salahodjaev, Raufhon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1800374313 ISBN 13: 9781800374317

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022

Synopsis

Since Garrett Hardin published ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ in 1968, critics have argued that population growth and capitalism contribute to overuse of natural resources and degradation of the global environment. They propose coercive, state-centric solutions. This book offers an alternative view. Employing insights from new institutional economics, the authors argue that property rights, competitive markets, polycentric political institutions, and social institutions such as trust, patience and individualism enable society to conserve natural resources and mitigate harms to the global environment.

The authors support their argument by considering several types of commons: forests, fisheries, minerals, and the global environment. The central lesson of these empirical studies is that following a simple set of rules – definition and enforcement of property rights in response to local conditions, creating and maintaining democracy at the local level, and establishing markets to allocate resources – improves ecological and environmental sustainability.

This book will appeal to scholars of natural resources, economics, political science and public policy as well as policymakers who ar
e interested in environmental governance and the ways markets contribute to sustainability.

About this title

About the Author

Meina Cai, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, Ilia Murtazashvili, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Founding Director, Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh, US, Raufhon Salahodjaev, Tashkent State University of Economics, Uzbekistan

Edition details

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1800374313
• ISBN 13: 9781800374317
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192