Governing the commons in Portugal: an historical approach.

Abstract

“Some scholarly articles about the “tragedy of the commons” recommended that “state” control most natural resources to prevent their destruction; others recommend that privatizing those resources will resolve the problem. What one can observe in the world, however, is that neither the state nor the market is uniformly successful in enabling individuals to sustain long-term, productive use of natural resource systems”(Ostrom, 2011,1). The aim of this paper is to provide a broad overview on the institutional framework of common lands management in Portugal from 1940 to 2015. It focuses on a field of research in which I have produced others studies (Neto, 1981, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1997, 2003, 2013).