New Values for New Challenges: The Emergence of Progressive Commons as a Property Regime for the 21st Century

ABSTRACT

Property regimes are based on fundamental values of the society or group that designs and reproduces them. This paper analyses the ethical underpinnings of Progressive Commons in comparison to the values underlying private property and traditional Commons. Against this backdrop, we discuss the potential of Progressive Commons to address major challenges in context of the twenty-first century economy. Seed Commons serve as an example. Our analysis shows that Progressive Commons respond to contemporary societal and environmental challenges by re-interpreting the classical values underlying traditional private and common property regimes, turning them to sovereignty, re-democratization, and social-ecological sustainability in the global context.

KEYWORDS:

• New Commons
• property regime
• ethics
• sustainability
• sovereignty
• re–democratization

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Ethical approval: This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There exist various typologies of property regimes and one can further differentiate types of property. For instance, the literature in institutional economics distinguishes four types of property regimes, including also government property and no property (cf. Ostrom, 1999). For the purpose of this paper, private and common property regimes are most relevant, though. Approaching from a New Commons perspective, which develops alternatives to private property arrangements in specific, underlying values of private and traditional common property regimes constitute the crucial backdrop for understanding the ethical underpinnings of Progressive Commons. Specifically, considering government or state property is less fruitful within this context. State property is defined by ownership of a given state and governance and use-rights are determined by its established institutions and power mechanisms. State property is based on the governance structures, purpose, values, and constitutional design of the state. The value basis of state property is somehow arbitrary as a result, as it depends on the purpose and underlying values of a given state, which differ substantially between various forms of government, e.g., monarchic, democratic, socialist, and communist states.

2. The term values is understood as follows: ‘Values are desirable goals that transcend situations and serve as guiding principles in people’s lives in general’ (Schwartz, 1992 in; Steg, 2016, p. 279). They are the general concepts underlying specific behaviors. For example, someone who values the integrity of the environment might therefore pick up litter from the street. Values can constitute the common ground of communities and societies, and serve as guidance for societal interactions and the design of societal institutions. For instance, freedom and equality are foundational values of the US, human dignity represents a foundational value of Germany, and liberty, equality, and fraternity are foundational to France. Such values serve as an ultimate reference point for the good in the society.

3. The idea that markets automatically coordinate individual self-interested actions to promote societal welfare has often been linked to Adam Smith (1776), who used the term invisible hand to describe this effect. It is worth noting, though, that Smith mentioned the invisible hand only a few times in his entire work and developed a more complex economic and political philosophy, which considered markets as well-embedded, regulated parts of society (Becker, 2011; Dierksmeier, 2011; Young, 2009).

4. Perilleux and Nyssens are not the only ones to draw this distinction. Other authors just find different labels: Bresnihan (2015) talks of material/natural vs. immaterial/social commons approaches; Vivero-Pol et al. (2018) differentiate between resource-based and governance-based approaches. In essence, they describe the same two angles for conceptualizing Commons: either viewing the resource as the starting point for inquiry or the social institutions. For simplification, the terminology of Perilleux and Nyssens is used in this paper.

5. The term commodification describes ‘the expansion of market trade to previously non-marketed areas’ (Gómez-Baggethun & Ruiz-Pérez, 2011, p. 619).

6. Scholars with a focus on commons as resource systems, however, see commons co-existing with other property institutions, such as private property or public property (Vivero-Pol et al., 2018) within the existing societal order.

7. Further authors supporting this position are McCarthy (2005), Wall (2017), and Hardt and Negri (2011).

8. Not all New Commons arrangements necessarily support (all of) these values, as they are heterogenous. For example, feminist theorists point out that communities who manage commons are not promoting and deliberating equality, power sensitivity and positive ecological outcomes by default (Leder et al., 2019; Tummers & MacGregor, 2019). If these aspects are not consciously addressed by communities, management of commons can increase female time poverty and strengthen inequitable gender practices on individual and community level (Sato & Soto Alarcón, 2019).Already Bromley (1990, p. 3) pointed out that ‘common property regimes exist and function very much like private property regimes and state property regimes. That is, some are not working very well, while others work very well indeed.’

9. This is especially visible in the food sovereignty discourse (Edelman, 2014; Patel, 2009; Windfuhr & Jonsen, 2005).

10. To value democracy is a choice Western societies have made during Enlightenment. To realize democracy, ongoing democratization is necessary, i. e. critical deliberation by its citizens and their education to be able to do so (Castoriadis & Curtis, 1997).

11. Habib (2015) discusses, how the term biodiversity is in itself already value-laden.

12. On the philosophically moot utilitarian argument in favor of intellectual property rights as incentives for innovation see Yung (2009).

Additional information

Funding

This paper has been elaborated as part of the research Project ‘RightSeeds? - Common-based rights on seeds and seed varieties for a social-ecological transformation of plant cultivation’, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under grant [01UU1602A] as part of the program ‘Research for sustainable development’ (FONA).