Community, collective action and common grazing: The case of post‐socialist Mongolia

Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management

“…Informal institutions, however, may be endogenously enforced; they are upheld by mutual agreement among the social actors involved, or by relations of power and authority between them. Recent work on institutions stresses the socially``embedded'' nature of informal institutions, or the multiplicity of institutional relations in which people are engaged at any one time (Runge, 1986;Mearns, 1996b;Swallow et al, 1997). As argued in the burgeoning literature on social capital, trust and networks of civic engagement (e.g., Gambetta, 1988;Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti, 1993;Stewart, 1996;Humphrey and Schmitz, 1996;Mearns, 1996c;Dasgupta, 1996), multiple involvement may promote mutual assurance among social actors, promoting cooperation and collective action.…”

Organising collective reputation: An Ostromian perspective

“…Their absence is usually explained as being due to a relative weakness of social capital in producer communities and the lack of supportive political and administrative context (Sikor 2002;Theesfeld 2004;Upton 2008;Schlüter et al 2010;Schmidt and Theesfeld 2012). Yet, there are important exceptions, proving that such cooperative efforts can emerge even in a relatively hostile socio-political environment (Mearns 1996;Gorton et al 2009;Sutcliffe et al 2013). Our examples fall in the latter category.…”

Decentralisation, Rural Livelihoods and Pasture-Land Management in Post-Socialist Mongolia

“…One of the most striking features of change in rural Mongolia in the early 1990s was the re-emergence of the khot ail as the primary unit of social organisation among herders in all but the most arid regions of Mongolia [Mearns 1993b[Mearns , 1996. The khot ail is a fluid group of herding households that co-operates in livestock and pasture management, notably to take advantage of labour economies of scale.…”

“…Serious conflicts may still emerge if competing claims to the surrounding pastures are made by two herders with equally large herds. Herders with small herds will usually be tolerated even if they camp close to the winter pastures claimed by a wealthy herder, since a certain level of 'free riding' is unlikely to undermine the prospects for sustainable pasture-land use [Mearns, 1996].…”

“…The gains from the privatisation of state and collective assets were unequally distributed, and inequality in livestock holdings began to increase dramatically. Older, more established and new herding households had divergent interests and levels of skill and experience in livestock production, which both contributed to rising inequality and reduced the likelihood of successful collective action in pasture-land management [Mearns, 1996].…”