Brigham Young University Law School BYU Law Digital Commons Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2007 Emerging Commons and Tragic Institutions Brigham Daniels BYU Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Environmental Law Commons, and the Natural Resources Law Commons Recommended Citation Brigham Daniels, Emerging Commons and Tragic Institutions, 37 Eɴᴠᴛʟ. L. 515 (2007). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLES EMERGING COMMONS AND TRAGIC INSTITUTIONS BY BRIGHAM DANIELS* For the past forty years, scholars have developed an immense literature devoted to understanding and solving the tragedy of the commons. The most prominent solutions to this-tragedy have focused on buildingand maintainingstable institutions.This Article reexamines this foundationalliterature by exploring the costs of stability In many cases, far more than is generally recognized, the way we value the commons changes. When values change, stable institutions that once made perfect sense become rigid institutions that block change. This Article explains how institutions most able to solve the tragedy of the commons often cause a tragedy of another sort. To ground theory in practice, this Article examines three case studies: the United States' governance of the radio spectrum, the founding of Yellowstone NationalPark, and western water law. This Article ends by proposinga set of &-aft principles to help us overcome institutional rigidity. For decades, commons scholarshiphas focused on the tragedy of overuse. This Article re-frames the commons debate, explicitly taking into account not only the benefits of stable institutionsbut also theircosts. I. INTRO DUCTIO N ................................................................................................................. 516 II. CHALLENGES OF PROTECTING THE COMMONS ................................................................ 523 • Ph.D. Candidate, Duke University, Nicholas School of the Environment; J.D., Stanford Law School, 2003; M.P.A., University of Utah, 2000. For their comments and insights, I wish to thank Jim Salzman, Meg McKean, Scott Daniels, Buzz Thompson, Erika Weinthal, Christian Turner, Josh Eagle, Chris Schroeder, Mark Buntaine, Jonathon Weiner, and Lincoln Davies. I also thank the talented editors of EnvironmentalLaw.I gratefully acknowledge that this Article is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. I dedicate this Article to Kellie. [5151 516 ENVIRONMENTALLA W [Vol. 37:515 A. Challenges Imbeddedin the Traitsof a Commons......................................... 523 B. Challenges of Convincing Commons Users to Cut Back ............................... 525 C Problems of EngineeringCollective Action ..................................................... 526 Im. BUILDING AND MAINTAINING STABLE INSTITUrIONS IN THE COMMONS .......................... 527 A. Institutionsand How They Govern the Commons ................. 528 B. BuildingStable Institutions................................................................................ 528 1. Credible Commitments............................................................................... 529 2. Credible Threats ......................................................................................... 530 C MaintainingStable Institutions.......................................................................... 531 IV. EMERGING COMMONS ...................................................................................................... 534 A. Crowding.............................................................................................................. 535 1. CrowdingAmong Users.............................................................................. 535 2. CrowdingAmong Uses ............................................................................... 537 B. Recogniing Crowding....................................................................................... 538 V. TRAGIC INSTITUTIONS ...................................................................................................... 539 A. Relative Neglect of InstitutionalChange wthin the Commons Scholarship........................................................................................................... 539 B. Tragic Institutions............................................................................................... 541 C Tragic InstitutionsFramework ......................................................................... 541 VI. FROM THEORY TO APPLICATION ...................................................................................... 544 A Case Studies ......................................................................................................... 545 1. Bringingthe Radio Spectrum into the Information Age ........................ 545 2. Creationof Yellowstone NationalPark and the Eviction of Histozic Users.............................................................................................. 550 3. Western Water Law and the Changing West................... 554 B. Four Typologies of Tragic Institutions............................................................. 559 1. Rival Institutions......................................................................................... 559 2. LayeredInstitutions .................................................................................... 561 3. Static Institutions....................................................................................... 562 4. ResidualInstitution ..................................................................................... 563 VII. MANAGING EMERGING COMMONS AND TRAGIC INSTITUTIONS ........................................ 564 A Design Principlesfor a Changing World .......................................................... 565 B. Findingthe Right Mix Between InstitutionalStability and Responsiveness.................................................................................................... 568 VIII. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 570 I. INTRODUCTION About forty years ago Garrett Hardin recounted what has become the world's most famous environmental fable: the story of a tribe of herdsmen who grazed their cows in an open field.1 The herdsmen lived by a simple 1 Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 SCI. 1243, 1244 (1968). 20071 EMERGING COMMONS AND TRA GIC INSTITTIONS 517 rule: when a herdsman added a cow to the pasture, he took it home for the slaughter. For generations the herdsmen grazed their cows in relative peace. But, if one were looking, problems started to appear. As the herdsmen added more cows, grass became increasingly sparse, the terrain more trampled, and the cows a little crowded. The herdsmen slowly came to understand that adding cows meant more strain on the pasture and that this threatened the herd and their way of life. Yet, each herdsman continued to add cows to the pasture, all the while resenting others that did the'same. No herdsman would cut back; each feared that if he did, others would simply continue adding cows. This ends the story. We are left to wonder if the herdsmen eventually pushed the pasture over the brink and if so, at what cost. But Hardin's message rings clear: the individually rational interest to overuse the commons inevitably resulted in a collectively tragic outcome. Hardin famously termed this clash that threatened the pasture-and even the herdsmen-the tragedyof the commons'2 Scholars have applied Hardin's insight in a dizzying number of contexts to explain real-world problems,3 including air pollution,4 water use, 5 water 2 Others have made many of the points made by Hardin in The Tragedy of the Commons. Elinor Ostrom traces elements of Hardin's argument as far back as Aristotle. ELINOR OSTROM, GOVERNING THE COMMONS: THE EVOLUTION OF INSTfrTIONS FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION 2-3 (James E. Alt & Douglass C. North eds., 1990) [hereinafter OSTROM, GOVERNING THE COMMONS]. Hardin was not even alone among his contemporaries in identifying what has become known as the tragedy of the commons. See, e.g., H. Scott Gordon, The Economic Theory of a Common- PropertyResource: The Fishery, 62 J. POL. ECON. 124, 124 (1954); Harold Demsetz, Toward a Theory of PropertyRghtls 57 AM. ECON. REV. 347, 354-55 (1967). Nonetheless, "Hardin gave the problem a vivid and visceral name that quickly captures our attention and tells us much of what we need to know." Barton H. Thompson, Jr., TragicallyDifflcult: The Obstacles to Governing the Commons, 30 ENVTL. L. 241, 242 (2000). 3 A LexisNexis search of "tragedy of the commons" produces 1,618 results in the Law Reviews, CLE, Legal Journals & Periodicals Combined Database (completed on June 28, 2007). 4 See WILLIAM D. NORDAUS, MANAGING THE GLOBAL COMMONS: THE ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1 (1994); Tom Tietenberg, The Tradable PermitsApproach to Protectingthe Commons: What Have We Learned?, in THE DRAMA OF THE COMMONS 197, 202-03 (Elinor Ostrom et al. eds., 2002); Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, supra note 1, at 1245 ("In a reverse way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in problems of pollution. Here it is not a question of