Gestão de recursos de uso comum sob a ótica da teoria da ação comunicativa

Abstract

The management of common-pool resources has received increasing attention in the field of Administration and the Social Sciences. Elinor Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resource Theory demonstrated that communities can develop their own institutional arrangements to collectively manage their goods effectively, without relying exclusively on the state or the market. However, the theory remains underdeveloped regarding the processes of constructing, legitimizing, and revising the norms that support self-governance. To address this gap, this dissertation proposes a theoretical expansion based on Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, seeking to answer the following question: How can Elinor Ostrom’s Neo-institutional Theory of Common-Pool Resource management be expanded to incorporate communicative action, from a Habermasian perspective, in order to explain the process of constructing legitimate norms that can solve collective problems? The general objective was defined as follows: to analyze the process of elaborating norms, and their forms of legitimation and validation, aimed at solving collective problems, through the expansion of Elinor Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resource Theory grounded in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action. The specific objectives were: i) to critically review Elinor Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resource Theory, with emphasis on the construction, adaptation, and legitimation of norms that sustain self-governance; ii) to analyze empirical evidence on commons management through the lens of Ostrom’s theory, focusing on processes of norm construction and legitimation; iii) to propose a theoretical model integrating Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action with Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resource Theory, highlighting the role of communication in the creation of legitimate norms and in the sustainability of self-governance. This dissertation is theoretical in nature and structured in three parts. First, a systematic review of Elinor Ostrom’s work was conducted, identifying her main contributions as well as analytical gaps related to the absence of an emphasis on intersubjectivity, deliberation, and normative legitimacy. Next, a qualitative metasynthesis of empirical studies applying Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resource Theory was developed, revealing that, in practice, the success of self-governance is often associated with communicative processes such as negotiation, consensus-building, mutual recognition, and rule revision emerging from public spheres. Finally, a theoretical construction was developed, resulting in the model of Deliberative Commons Governance. This model complements the reformulation of the IAD framework (deliberative IAD) and the expansion of the design principles, proposing a communicative reorganization of commons self-governance and distinguishing two analytical moments: the pre-institutional moment, in which norms emerge from public deliberation, and the post-institutional moment, in which they are legitimized and reformulated when necessary. By repositioning communication as a central element of institutional analysis, this dissertation contributes to a more critical and reflective understanding of commons self-governance, offering a theoretical model that expands Elinor Ostrom’s approach. Keywords: common; common-pool resources; Elinor Ostrom; self-government; collective action; communicative action