A growing body of field and experimental literature provides considerable evidence that individuals may adopt self-governing institutions that enable conflict resolution. This paper examines this issue by exploring the role of heterogeneity in individuals' production capabilities and past...

We explore how different processes of constitution formation involve tradeoffs between exclusion, stability, and commitment, as institutional arrangements are devised for managing cooperation, competition, and conflicts among independent decision-making centers. We build upon John Searle's...

Integrated watershed management, preferably under the direction of a watershed or basin management body, has been prescribed in the water policy literature and from other quarters for decades. Few instances may be found where this recommendation has been implemented. This gap between...

The term "common-property resource" is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one. It is also used for property owned by a community of resource users. Such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis. In this paper we...