Re-thinking enforcement mechanisms in property rights to natural resources

The importance of enforcement is so widely accepted as to be a truism in property rights analysis. While enforcement is critical to understanding property right structures, surprisingly little work looks at the specific mechanisms that make rights effective. Enforcement is typically understood to emerge naturally from effective legal structures and government enforcement. However the focus on formal enforcement often overlooks informal mechanisms that may be more important in understanding effective rights systems. Using comparative case studies, this paper examines situations where government enforcement agents may not be fully effective in enforcing rights. It provides a framework that allows the inclusion of multiple enforcement agents and interactions effects across enforcement activities to explain the emergence of effective and ineffective right systems. Particular attention is placed on right structures to natural resources and illustrations are taken from numerous environmental resource management situations and property right reform efforts.