Village Federations. Robust Nested Governance in Northern Spain 1 (Navarre, 14th-20 centuries) Miguel Laborda Pemán Utrecht University
[email protected] José Miguel Lana Berasain Public University of Navarra
[email protected] November 2012 Very Preliminary Version Do not quote without the authors’ permission Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the analysis of nested governance of common-pool resources from a long-term perspective. Our main research questions are: How was nesting articulated in pre-industrial societies? Which were their advantages and risks? To answer them, we analyse two historical case studies of nested regimes. In particular, the Valley of Roncal and the Sierra of Lokiz, both of them situated in Navarre, northern Spain, arranged across several levels the management and use of grazing pastures and forests already by the 14 th century. Keywords : Common-Property Institutions, Nesting, Multi-Level Governance. 1 This working paper has been written within the framework of the NWO-funded research project ‘Common Rules’. The regulation of institutions for managing commons in Europe, 1100 - 1800' , co- ordinated by dr. Tine de Moor (September 2011-August 2014), and in the case of J.M.Lana of the project HAR2009-09700, financed by the DGICyT. The authors thanks the members of the research team of the project Common Rules (Tine de Moor, René van Weeren, Annelies Tukker, Angus Winchester and Claudio Tagliapietra) their useful insights and help. All remaining errors are authors’ exclusive responsibility. 1 INTRODUCTION Among Ostrom’s design principles (E. Ostrom, 1990), institutional nesting appears as one of the least explored ones.