Ebook: Governing Access to Essential Resources

This book argues that essential resources ought to be governed by a combination of Voice and Reflexivity. Voice is the ability of social groups to choose the rules by which they are governed. Reflexivity is the opportunity to question one's own preferences in light of competing claims and to accommodate them in a collective learning process. The contributors to this volume weigh the potential of Voice and Reflexivity against such alternatives as the pricing mechanism, property rights, common resource management, political might, or brute force.

This book argues that essential resources ought to be governed by a combination of Voice and Reflexivity: the ability of social groups to choose the rules by which they are governed and the opportunity to question one's own preferences in light of competing claims and to accommodate them in a collective learning process.