Conceptualizing Common Property Rights: An Institutionalist Reading of Elinor Ostrom

Property rights are central to studies of natural resource governance, as they shape both our understanding of resource use and our capacity to act upon it. A key issue lies in the coexistence of characteristics typically associated with the public sphere (non-excludability of the resource) and others associated with the private sphere (subtractability of the resource). Ostrom thus suggests that common property consists of “essentially share contracts.” This, however, raises a fundamental question: what distinguishes such a regime from a mere aggregation of individual property rights? To address this, we return to the foundations of Ostrom’s framework, which draw on the institutionalist theory of John R. Commons. While much of the literature has focused on the notion of ‘bundles of rights,’ we argue that further insights can be gained from Commons’s conception of legal relations. Combined with Ostrom’s emphasis on language, common property can be understood as an emergent phenomenon arising from the complex relations that constitute the commons, rather than a formal aggregation of distinct private properties. This perspective ultimately highlights the central role of informality in such regimes, explaining their difficult incorporation into modern legal systems