Common Pool Resources Dilemma: Theorizing What Drives Sharing States to Cooperate

Abstract

The free-rider problem is ever present in the common pool resources (CPRs) discourse. This is owing to exclusion and substractability, which are the defining characteristics of the CPRs. Communities and civilizations, as well as modern states, have struggled to reduce the degree of the free-rider problem in the common pool resource (CPR) context. By and large, the international nature of a number of CPR clusters has consistently and increasingly centered the debate, on how best can the sharing states cooperate to address the free-rider problem at both the international and the local scale. The article sets out to discuss and assess the explanatory power of the three main theories that derive the states that share CPRs to cooperate. The approach centers on analyzing the explanatory power of the theories at the international level.    * PhD Student, University of Konstanz, Email Kelvin.Munisi.uni-konstanz.de