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Despite significant progress in recent years, the evolution of commons over the long run remains an under-explored area. During the last years an international team of historians has worked under the umbrella of the Common Rules Project in order to design and test a new methodology aimed at advancing our knowledge on the dynamics of institutions for collective action -in particular commons. This project aims to contribute to the current debates in three different fronts. Theoretically, it explicitly draws the attention to change and adaptation in the commons -contrasting with more static analyses. Empirically, it highlights the value of historical records as a rich source of information for longitudinal analysis of the functioning of commons. Methodologically, it develops a systematic way of analyzing and comparing commons' regulations across regions and time, setting a number of variables that have been defined on the basis of the "most common denominators" in commons' regulations across countries and time periods. In this paper we introduce the project, describe our sources and methodology, and present the preliminary results of our analysis.

“Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” So argued ecologist Garrett Hardin in “ The Tragedy of the Commons ” in the 13 December 1968 issue of Science ( 1 ). Hardin questioned society's ability to manage shared resources and avoid an environmentally and socially calamitous free-for-all. In the 50 years since, the essay has influenced discussions ranging from climate change (see page 1217 ) to evolution, from infectious disease to the internet, and has reached far beyond academic literature—but not without criticism. Considerable work, notably by Nobelist Elinor Ostrom ( 2 ), has challenged Hardin, particularly his emphasis on property rights and government regulatory leviathans as solutions. Instead, research has documented contexts, cases, and principles that reflect the ability of groups to collectively govern common resources. To mark this anniversary and celebrate the richness of research and practice around commons and cooperation, Science invited experts to share some contemporary views on such tragedies and how to avert them. — Brad Wible

We review different interpretations of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and explore how they relate to the discussion of the link between the EMP and economic growth. Recently Dennison and Ogilvie have argued that the EMP did not contribute to growth in Early Modern Europe. We argue that the link between the EMP and economic growth is incorrectly conceptualized. Age of marriage is not a good scale for the degree to which countries were characterized by EMP. Rather, the economic effects of the EMP should be seen in the broader context of how marriage responds to changing economic circumstance.

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One of the classic problems in social science is known as 'the dilemma of the commons', in which land, water, and other resources held jointly by social or economic segments tend to be depleted sooner and to a greater extent than privately held assets. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many aspects of western European society changed fundamentally, including the abolition of common-property rights, which in itself was related to social and economic shifts in that same society. This book intends to put the debate on commons, commoners, and the disappearance of both throughout early modern and modern northwestern Europe in a new light, through new approaches and innovative methodologies. Tine De Moor aims to link the historical debate about the long-term evolution of commons to the present-day debates on common-pool resources, as well as touching upon various disciplines within the social sciences that work on commons issues.

N a t u r e s Sciences Sociétés Dossier Regards Keywords:commons; history; interdisciplinarity; long-term development; institutions Abstract -Over the past decades the scope of commons research has been expanded considerably, and scholars from various disciplines working on the subject have moved closer to a common definition. There is however still one essential and quite fundamental point of disagreement (although it is hardly ever made explicit) and that is about the use of the term "commons", which is a centuries-old term. Historically, when used with the definite article, it has denoted a community's common pasturage. More recently, the term is also being used by scholars from other disciplines to include completely open resources such as oceans and the air we breathe, which are also referred to as "global commons". Although it cannot be denied that the air and seas are in principle collective resources available to all creatures on Earth, these resources lack two important attributes that are characteristic of the commons as they have existed for centuries in Europe and beyond. Unlike the global commons, the historical commons were characterized by institutionalization and self-governance. In this article we describe the evolution of the term and the discipline over the past few centuries and suggest ways to reconcile these differences. Reconciling them could improve integration of the long-term historical approach in the analysis of present-day interpretations, which in itself would be an important step forward in commons research. Mots-clés :biens communs ; histoire ; interdisciplinarité ; développement à long-terme ; institutions Résumé -Des pâtures communales aux biens communs mondiaux : un regard historique sur les approches interdisciplinaires des biens communs. Au cours des dernières décennies, le champ de la recherche sur les biens communaux ou biens communs (commons) s'est considérablement élargi et les chercheurs des diverses disciplines qui étudient cet objet tendent peu à peu vers une définition commune. Il reste cependant un point de désaccord majeur et tout à fait fondamental, quoique rarement explicité : l'emploi du terme « biens communaux », expression qui remonte loin dans l'Histoire. Historiquement, en anglais, quand il est accompagné de l'article défini (the commons), il désignait les communaux, c'est-à-dire les pâtures ou parcours communaux d'une collectivité. Plus récemment, les chercheurs d'autres disciplines ont utilisé ce terme pour caractériser des ressources d'accès totalement libre telles que les océans et l'air que nous respirons, désignées sous le nom de « biens communs mondiaux ». Même si l'air et les mers sont indéniablement des ressources collectives accessibles en principe à tout habitant de la planète, il manque à ces ressources deux attributs importants qui sont caractéristiques des « communaux » tels qu'ils ont existé pendant des siècles en Europe et au-delà. Contrairement aux biens communs mondiaux, les biens communs historiques étaient caractérisés par une institutionn...