Research Programs Inventing and Governing Transnational Commons in Europe (EUROCOMMONS)
Resources are often embedded in large geophysical features like seas, the air, big rivers, or mountain ranges which in Europe, by virtue of its small political scale, produce chronic international competition over their use. Such multi-state resources tend to acquire aspects of a “commons,” shared resources open to all. Hence, they are also prone to the “tragedy” of the commons deriving from the game-theoretical assumption that no one will moderate his own use of a common resource if he or she expects others will not follow suit. The original prediction was that this would inevitably lead to overuse of common resources, crowding, and ultimately the demise of the commons. Critical commons theorists have argued that for cultural and institutional reasons such tragic outcomes are often averted in practice, but in so doing they have all but neglected the important role of technologies in this process, thereby not only misrepresenting the historical record, but also producing a less than adequate policy frame. This CRP proposes to bring technology back in by focusing on how technology has shaped new transnational resources and ultimately contributed to the regulation of their common use. Three roles for technology are identified: Technologies have literally produced resources and in the process imprinted specific patterns of entitlement and use. Technologies have increased the productivity of resource exploitation and thereby shifted many common resources from the status of limitless “public goods” to scarce and threatened “common pool resources.” At the same time new technologies of measurement and communication, together with new scientific theories, have created conditions for understanding wrongly perceived public goods as in fact limited common pool resources. 3) Technological innovation is interwoven with collective efforts to regulate the transnational use of common pool resources. These concepts will be explored and tested by investigating a number of very different kinds of transnational commons in Europe from 1850 to the present.
Stichting Historie der Techniek -- Revised: 14-04-2010 Chamber of Commerce Eindhoven 41155291.