Sharing in Common: A Republican Defence of Group Ownership

The institution of group ownership has rarely been studied in political philosophy. Instead, most property theories in this discipline focus on arguments for and against individual ownership. When group ownership is discussed at all, moreover, this is often in the specific context of workplace governance. What is lacking is a general normative justification of group ownership that explains when and why it is valuable that individuals share a resource. This dissertation provides such a justification. The particular conception of group ownership that it defends is the institutional realisation of a sharing practice, called sharing in common. In this practice, members of a private group determine collectively and democratically how their shared object may be used. This conception of group ownership is irreducible to individual property rights, because under this institu-ion, individual rights to use and/or derive income from an object are authorised and subject to change by the group’s collective decisions. Group ownership so understood is valuable when and because it secures basic non-domination, and that it is also justified for that reason. People enjoy basic non-domination when they have the capabilities that are reasonably required to resist arbitrary power, and are equally in control of the decisions that affect these basic capabilities. This ideal constitutes the basis for a society of equals, where the normative status that belongs to beings capable of practical reason is affirmed for everyone. This dissertation develops two criteria for judging whether property institutions realise basic non-domination. First, they must promote people's ability to use resources to gain their basic capabilities. Secondly, the institutions must place the people who rely on a resource for their basic capabilities, in control of how that resource may be used. Using common property regimes (CPRs) in natural and agricultural resources as the central case study, the dissertation show