Armitage, Derek. 2008. Governance and the commons in a multi-level world. International Journal of the Commons 2 (1):7-32.
The author integrates three interdisciplinary fields of study: common property theory, social‐ecological systems/resilience theory and political ecology to support a narrative on governing commons resources with an emphasis placed on identifying the role of power, scale and levels of organization. In managing common pool resources, the author advocates for the application of complex adaptive systems whereby “the continued cross‐fertilization of ideas is crucial for the evolution of commons governance.”
The problem addressed in this work is how can governance resolve the challenges associated with resource depletion when it is driven, in part, by demand for resources from outside of the region? The article concludes by suggesting that governance requires: deliberation among social actors where persuasion and negotiation are the means to realize ‘principles, values, models and assumptions’; a multi‐disciplinary approach to account for the ‘complex, adaptive system’; a means to find commonalities between disparate disciplines; and improved capacity and a common framework to document outcomes of new ecological/economic/social institutional forms. Armitage argues that ‘evaluation’ tools will need to be developed that are suitable for complex systems and should be directed towards: ecosystem condition; livelihood condition; and power, processes and institutional condition.
The discussion on integrating traditional knowledge and western science is an interesting summary of a number of research works whereby “an expected benefit of multi‐level government, for example, is the linking of formal science and local or indigenous knowledge systems.” It follows that the ability of any given governance system to accommodate both legitimate perspectives, western science and traditional knowledge, will serve the development of governance systems better than if only one of the perspectives is recognized.
Armitage cautions that the “over –attention to normative principles, even when directed at building flexible and distributive institutional forms, can impart a perspective that governance is much like a recipe. Yet, attention to who makes decisions about which recipe is followed, who gets access to the ingredients, and who benefits from the outcomes is equally important.” I think that this analogy is a useful means to communicate some of the complexity and intricate dynamics of governing water resources.
This paper argues that common property theory has tended to emphasize the privatization of property rights “converting natural capital stocks of commons resources into commodities” and the continued growth in the international demands for products from the commons and its implications in a liberalized political and economic environment. Resilience thinking is described as having a number of important core themes including: unpredictability, social‐ecological change, and dynamics of cross scale interaction. Linking to commons literature is the requirement in resilience thinking to be flexible and grounded in distributive forms of governance. Political ecology is seen to integrate “political economy critiques and ecology and underlying contexts and process of human‐environment relations.” Armitage notes that most political ecological analysis involves little if any ecology. Core themes of political ecology include: power, power relationships, and analysis of how different interests mediate relationships across different levels.
Armitage quotes Kooiman and Barinck’s (2005) definition of governance of natural resources whereby “the whole of public as well as private interaction taken to solve societal problems and create societal opportunities including…the formulation and application of principles, guiding those interactions and care for institutions that enable them.”
