2002/11/01 by Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis · 74 citations
Social Sciences · #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Social Capital and Networks #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Selfishness #Corporate governance #Insider #Social capital #Altruism (biology) #Property rights #State (computer science) #Common-pool resource #Set (abstract data type) #Economics #Business #Public economics #Political science #Microeconomics #Law #Finance #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1111/1468-0297.00077
published in The Economic Journal 112(483), F419-F436 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2002/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Community governance is the set of small group social interactions that, with market and state, determine economic outcomes. We argue (i) community governance addresses some common market and state failures but typically relies on insider‐outsider distinctions that may be morally repugnant and economically costly; (ii) the individual motivations supporting community governance are not captured by either selfishness or altruism; (iii) communities, markets and states are complements, not substitutes; (iv) when poorly designed, markets and states crowd out communities; (v) some distributions of property rights are better than others at fostering community governance; and (vi) communities will probably increase in importance in the future.