Survival without sanctioning: The relationship between institutional resilience and methods of dealing with free-riding on early modern Dutch commons

In the early modern period, much rule-making took place on the local level, also within institutions for collective action such as commons. The term ‘commons’ stood for both a wide range of natural resources and for the institution itself, which was characterised by self-governance and self-regulation. Recent literature on the regulation of collective resources puts much emphasis on the role of sanctioning in order to prevent freeriding among those whoare entitled to use the commons, and by those who have no rights but try to benefit. Another branch of the literature searches for the ‘holy gra... Mehr ...