Beyond Collective Action Problems

Atul Pokharel, currently at Yale University, was an Assistant Professor at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He studies the political economy of infrastructure governance, and the community maintenance of shared physical and digital resources. His areas of expertise include Urban Governance, International Development Planning, and Political Economy. He focuses on the role of fairness in the community maintenance of infrastructure commons. His research interests include free and open-source software, and the "greening" of transportation systems in global cities. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University and holds a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT as well as a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Princeton University with a minor in Applied and Computational Mathematics.

• Preface Chapter 1: Sustained Cooperation, Fairness Problems and Irrigation SystemsChapter 2: What Affects Sustained Cooperation?Chapter 3: Perceptions of FairnessChapter 4: Conceptions of FairnessChapter 5: The Fairness ProblemChapter 6: Beyond Irrigation Systems and Physical InfrastructureAppendix 1: MethodsAppendix 2: Expanded ResultsReferencesIndex

Nobel prize winning Elinor Ostrom's study of farmer-managed irrigation systems in Nepal was the foundation of her famous theory of governance of the commons. With Ostrom's blessings and data, Atul Pokharel, whose own family played a pivotal role in these successful community-managed irrigation systems returns to them to compare how they have fared three decades later. What emerges is a gem of a book, a rare large scale, temporal study of shared resource management, as painstakingly researched as it is powerfully argued. A magisterial multi-methods research design allows Pokharel to develop a sophisticated theoretical framework that centers a novel factor-famers' perceptions of fairness. Pokharel's remarkable work is essential, accessible reading for scholars and practitioners of development alike.