Collective Action in Irish Coastal Fishery

This case was part of a study to determine whether the institutional design principles of Ostrom were, in fact, related to "governance success" by Cox et al.  In that analysis, this case was classified as a success/failure (to be supplemented).

The original case study authors deemed the shellfish cooperative as a success to prevent encroachment by external actors (salmon farmers) but a failure to effectively regulate freeriding within the cooperative they formed.

This case study used a social constructivist perspective to analyze a coastal marine CPR in Ireland. In their approach, the authors view a "CPR as an entity within a wider external environment, focusing on resource users’ motivations for certain action strategies. The outcome of collective management is considered to be the result of interactions between stakeholders and nonhuman entities, which depends on the way social actors ‘‘socially construct’’ their everyday reality. The empirical basis of the theoretical CPR analysis is a case study of Irish Žfishermen, who felt alienated from their Žfishery as a result of the expansion of commercial Žfish farms, and who in response created a shellfish cooperative to secure common property rights to a local bay and prevent the expansion of a local salmon farm.