Self-Organising Common-Pool Resource Allocation and Canons of Distributive Justice

Abstract

Two principles of enduring institutions for self-organising resource allocation are congruence of the allocation method to the resources available, and participation of those affected by the allocation (the appropriators) in selecting that method. However, the principles do not say anything explicitly about the fairness of the allocation method, or the outcomes. In this paper, we complement these principles with canons of distributive justice represented as legitimate claims, which are implemented as voting functions that determine the order in which resource requests are satisfied. The appropriators vote on the weight attached to the scoring functions, and so self-organise the allocation method. Experiments with a variation of the Linear Public Good game show that this pluralistic self-organising approach produces a better balance of utility and fairness (for agents that comply with the rules of the game) than monistic or fixed approaches.