Collective Action and Property Rights: A Planner's Critical Look at the Dogma of Private Property

The focus of this essay is success in collective action. It is based on a critical review and synthesis of the literature on collective action and property rights. I make three key arguments in the essay. First, contrary to the narrow conventional wisdom, self-interested behavior can lead to successful collective action in both commonly managed resources and open-access situations. The literature documents and explains a number of examples of success. Second, and nonetheless, collective action can be problematic and may require institutional responses, but privatization is not a panacea. Paradoxically, privatism can be a key source of the problems in collective action. And third, since the conventionally postulated, simple one-to-one relationship between a private property rights regime and an efficient outcome is not true, and given planners' institutional interests, they should take a leading role in publicly advocating the potential viability of common property and collective action. Another important objective of the essay is to introduce to the readers a vast body of non-traditional literature that has relevance for urban studies and planning practice. I include the literature on private property rights, 'the tragedy of the commons', 'the inverse commons', 'the comedy of the commons', and 'the tragedy of the anticommons'.