The conditions of collective action for local commons management: the case of irrigation in the Philippines

Abstract

We examine factors affecting the success and failure of collective action toward the management of local commons. Using cross-section survey data on the activities of irrigators' associations in the Philippines, regression analysis is conducted to identify factors underlying the success and failure in farmers' organizing collective action for the maintenance and operation of irrigation systems. We find that collective action is difficult to organize where (a) water supply is uniformly abundant; (b) water supply is greatly different between upper and lower streams in lateral; (c) the size of the association is large; (d) population density is low; (e) the share of nonfarm households is high; and (f) the history of irrigated farming is short. Our findings suggest that these difficulties can be overcome with adequate supports of state agencies to promote community-level cooperation. Copyright 2005 International Association of Agricultural Economics.

Social Determinants of Collective Resource Management in Bangladesh

“…The result also shows that users of older groups are more successful in collective maintenance than newer groups (model II). Our result is consistent with the findings of Fujiie et al (2005) and Meinzen-Dick et al (1997). But, Ternstrom (2003) found that the age of the organization has no statistical significance on the level of collective action.…”

“…For instance, some scholars disagree on variations in the physical characteristics of resources like scarcity, size, and proximity to markets, and how they affect the likelihood of collective action (e.g., Wade, 1987;Bardhan, 1993;Meinzen-Dick et al, 2002). Some researchers debate the importance of variations in the characteristics of resource users such as age of the resource users and salience of the resource to their livelihoods (Fujiie et al, 2005;Balland andPlatteau, 1996 andWade, 1987), while Ostrom et al, 1994;Poteete and Ostrom (2004) stress the importance of face-to-face communication. Tang (1992) broadly subdivided the factors into three categories: (i) physical and technical characteristics of the resource; (ii) characteristics of the users group and (iii) attributes of institutional arrangements.…”

“…The view of Meinzen-Dick et al (2002) is, members understand each other in older groups; whereas members of newer groups are less certain about teamwork with other members. Fujiie et al (2005) also assumed that collective action is less likely when the history of irrigation is short. A contending view of Araral (2009) is that the age of the irrigation system has no statistical significance on levels of collective action.…”

Privatization of tubewells in North China: Determinants and impacts on irrigated area, productivity and the water table

“…Not all actors in any given community, however, are eligible for these programs. While the subsidy programs mainly support the investment efforts of individual farmers, banks typically 6 While it is not believed that one can draw inferences from descriptive tables on causality, the work in the Phillipines by Fujiie et al (2005) show that water scarcity does lead to institutional changes in the water sector. In other work using data from China in both the surface water sector (Huang Q, Msangi S, Wang J, Huang J, Contract Water Management Reform and the Choice of Contractual Form in China, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, unpublished, 2005) and the groundwater sector (Wang et al 2005b), econometric analysis is used to show that causality can be determined.…”

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