Beyond collective action problems : perceived fairness and sustained cooperation in farmer managed irrigation systems in Nepal /
"This book aims to improve our understanding of the fundamental phenomenon of sustained cooperation around shared resources through the study of 233 long-running, community-managed irrigation systems in Nepal. These systems show the hallmarks of long enduring commons resources: the right instit...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2024]
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| Series: | Modern South Asia series.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "This book aims to improve our understanding of the fundamental phenomenon of sustained cooperation around shared resources through the study of 233 long-running, community-managed irrigation systems in Nepal. These systems show the hallmarks of long enduring commons resources: the right institutions, high social capital, relative autonomy, and a robust ability to solve collective action problems. Yet decades later, some continue to perform well while others have declined. Why do some groups successfully sustain cooperation to use and maintain shared resources while others don't? And more importantly, what lies beyond collective action problems? The answer comes from understanding how communities address the fairness problem. The longer individuals cooperate the more they become aware of how far their cooperative arrangement has diverged from the initial promise of fairness. This perception of fairness affects their commitment to maintaining the shared resource and participating in the institutions for governing it. Variations in perceptions of fairness, reflected in how willing each individual is to continue to cooperate, are hypothesized to make these systems more or less robust to shocks, which together generate divergences in the performance of the shared infrastructure. This argument is constructed using a mixed methods approach: using ethnographic observations and over 800 interviews with individual farmers to build the fairness argument, and by using a statistical analysis of a novel data set of these irrigation systems between 1976 and 2013 to support it"--Publisher's description. |
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| Item Description: | Also issued in print: 2024. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations. |
| Audience: | Specialized. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197755822 0197755828 9780197755815 019775581X |