Management of Common Resources: Market, Government, or Neither? A Review of Water Resources Management Studies in Iran (with an Emphasis on Ostrom’s View)

Many of the common natural resources of the world are in critical conditions. The solution to this crisis is the development of effective management institutions. However, there is no consensus on these institutions. Some economists believe that creating a privately owned entity can solve the management problems of these resources. Others support the control of resources by the central government. Some institutionalists consider the local management strategy as the solution to this crisis. In this study, an empirical meta-analysis was performed to examine what solution the Iranian studies on the management of water (as a common natural resource) have favored more and what factors they have considered for its success or failure. For this purpose, about 120 articles were collected from the Database of National Publications (Magiran), Noor Specialized Magazines Website (Noormags), Scientific Information Database (SID) of ACECR, and Comprehensive Portal of Humanities using ‘water management’ as the keyword. Seventy-three of these articles were related to the subject of the current study. The results of this research showed that most of these studies (about 70%) used a local participatory management solution and in order to investigate the reasons for its success or failure, they paid more attention to physical factors than institutional rules and arrangements. Thirty percent of the studies supported the market or government solution. In conclusion, this study suggests that more comprehensive approaches such as Ostrom’s analysis be used in future studies to find the most appropriate management method and its effectiveness in analyses so that common resources such as water can be managed more efficiently.