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Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Is tragedy due to over harvesting an inevitable consequence of the voluntary action of cooperation in a commons? No. Actually, commons theory resolved this question several decades ago. Such common goods are those pursued jointly by pluralities less than the dominant majority controlling the state and its unique ability to define public goods. In an era when the state has proven relatively powerless to define unambiguous public goods and public policy making is largely circumscribed in terms of a competition among interest groups, the state itself has become a major producer of common, rather than genuinely public, goods.