Governing Common-Property Assets: Theory and Evidence from Agriculture
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Governing Common‑Property Assets: Theory and Evidence from Agriculture Simon Cornée1 · Madeg Le Guernic2 · Damien Rousselière3 Received: 15 December 2018 / Accepted: 16 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This paper introduces a refined approach to conceptualising the commons in order to shed new light on cooperative practices. Specifically, it proposes the novel concept of Common-Property Assets (CPAs). CPAs are exclusively human-made resources owned under common-property ownership regimes. Our CPA model combines quantity (the flow of resource units available to members) and quality (the impact produced on the community by the members’ appropriation of the resource flow). While these two dimensions are largely pre-existing in the conventional case of natural common-pool resources, they directly depend on members’ collective action in CPAs. We apply this theoretical framework to farm machinery sharing agreements—a widespread grassroots cooperative phenomenon in agriculture—using a systematic literature review to generalise the findings from a sample of 54 studies published from 1950 to 2018. Our findings show that in successful CPAs, members endorse and do not deviate from a quantity-quality equilibrium that is collectively agreed upon. Despite the existence of thresholds for both quantity and quality due to (axiological) membership heterogeneity, qualitative changes in respect of the common good are possible in CPAs that promote democratic practices. Our study has potentially strong implications for developing ethics in cooperatives and the sustainable development of communities worldwide. Keywords Governance of the commons · Farm machinery sharing cooperative arrangements · Ethical aspects JEL Classification G3 · M00 · O17 · P32 · Q13
Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04579-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Simon Cornée simon.cornee@univ‑rennes1.fr Madeg Le Guernic madeg.leguernic@univ‑rennes1.fr Damien Rousselière damien.rousseliere@agrocampus‑ouest.fr 1
Université de Rennes 1, CREM UMR CNRS 6211, and CERMi, Faculté des Sciences Économiques, 7, Place Hoche CS 86514, 35065 Rennes Cedex, France
2
Université de Rennes 1, CREM UMR CNRS 6211, Faculté des Sciences Économiques, 7, Place Hoche CS 86514, 35065 Rennes Cedex, France
3
INRAE-AGROCAMPUS OUEST, UMR SMART-LERECO, CRISES, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2, rue André le Nôtre, 49045 Angers Cedex, France
Cooperatives have a long history as key players in the socioeconomic development of communities worldwide (Stiglitz 2009). As democratic organisations managed by their members, cooperatives are distinguished from investor-owned corporations by their orientation towards broader social goals. However, despite their economic significance in agriculture, banking, insurance, and healthcare, cooperatives have been largely ignored in the recent literature (Kalmi 2007). The commons paradigm of
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