Escaping the Tragedy of the Commons

Authors

Roger A. Lohmann, West Virginia UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 1995

College/Unit

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department/Program/Center

Social Work

Abstract

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.

Digital Commons Citation

Lohmann, Roger A., "Escaping the Tragedy of the Commons" (1995). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 2955.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/2955

Source Citation

An earlier version of this statement was published in a 1995 newsletter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (NSFRE).