One of the most consistent criticisms of the literature on common-pool resource management is that it has focused exclusively on small systems, and that as a result, its findings are not likely to be applicable to large systems. This is a valid critique, particularly when many of the most intractable modern environmental problems are quite large in scale. This project is designed to build on previous synthetic work at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and address this critique. It involves a group of 14 scholars collaborating to conduct a meta-analysis of cases of large-scale environmental governance to examine whether common-pool resource theories can help to explain outcomes at large scales.
Theme 4: Governance, policies and sustainable management.