Role of the State in a Commons-Creating Society
* Chapter/ Article: The Role of the State in a Commons-Creating Society. In: Chapter 7 in Democracy, Markets and the Commons. By Lukas Peter.
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"After having developed a commons theory of property, it is now necessary to turn to the question of the relationship between commons and the state, on the one hand, and the market, on the other. These questions are of great importance because the notion of commons is often interpreted as a form of social organization “beyond markets and states”(Ostrom 2010; Bollier et al.2012).As I will demonstrate in the next two chapters, I believe this interpretation to be rather misleading. To my mind, commons are not so much a radical alternative to the market and the state, but rather as a strategy for democratizing these two social arrangements. In general, the aim of my analysis is therefore to shift our framework of societal organization from one based on the state-market dichotomy to one conceptualized as a commons-creating society. In order to flesh out this idea, I will sketch how the state and the market can be transformed through commons institutions and civic practices of commoning. Let us begin this analysis with the state-commons relationship.
My examination of the state-commons relationship begins with some general, preliminary reflections on this relationship. In a second step, I discuss the specific role commons can play in relation to various forms of the state, including the monocentric, the minimal and welfare state. I then develop a better understanding of the notion of the state in a commons creating society with reference to the public goods housing, health care and education. In a final step, I discuss the role of the state in developing commons in a non-ideal world. Here, I touch on a number of issues: the ‘urgency’ of climate change, the role of commons in ‘developing’ countries, the threat of state oppression and opportunities to reclaim and cultivate commons both within and against the state."
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