Daniel W. Bromley

for issues related to contradictory, incompatible pieces of information. We’ll enter this specific point while dealing with the production of Dan Bromley.

(4) Concerning the natural system, the core assumption standing out is that of the interconnectedness of natural resources. Environmental Economics applies to environmental matters conceptual models derived from (industrial) Resource Economics. These models generally deal with the optimal use or extraction rate of one specific resource, all else being equal. This is legitimate as an exercise in Mathematics but proves inadequate as a support for decisions in real-world

situations, where environmental resources are characterised by complex systemic interdependencies.

The latter point needs not to attach to the assumption of imperfect knowledge

mentioned above: regardless of the degree of knowledge assumed for the individuals or agents within a given conceptual model, Ecological Economics would tend to consider the resource on which the same agents act within its complex ecological context. This has a two-fold implication. First, resources become connected to one another in functional terms, so that the harvest of every resource unit is bound to affect, in turn, the availability of other resources. Second, these functional ties are considered known only in part and, possibly, ex post.

We thus describe a world characterised by radical uncertainty, where undesired outcomes are a pervasive phenomenon and represent the rule rather than the exception (Faber et al. 1992). We will now explore the implication this has on the distribution of entitlements on and obligations to given ecosystems and the resources they represent through the work of Daniel Bromley and Arild Vatn.

restrain of individual and group behaviour (Bromley 2004, pg. 79; 2006, pg. 31, pg.

37). They determine the range of options for specific choices and configure the opportunity sets for the individual taking a decision.

Applied to environmental matters, the above definition puts us already in the frame of RQ2, addressing those entitlements and obligations that draw the line between economy and ecology. A closer look reveals however a potential for insights into RQ3 and RQ4, dealing respectively with the concepts and criteria distributing those entitlements and obligations and extending to the process of settling for those

criteria. New Institutional Economics sees institutions as constrains on a generalised human tendency towards opportunism. Opportunism – more specifically,

economising behaviour – is thereby taken for given, so that individual choice becomes an act of necessity determined by exogenous parameters such as information and utility – information-dependent marginal substitution rates, to be precise.

Bromley, instead, considers institutions as the result of a process of “working out what is best” under given circumstances (Bromley 2004, pg. 84; 2006, pp. 78-80;

2008). This is an analytically very different position: from the point of view of New Institutional Economics “what is best” is fixed prior to and even in absence of a specific institution. For Bromley, instead, it is the institution that defines it. If the

institution, distributing entitlements and obligations, comes devoid of any hint on what is best, it merely corresponds to a distribution of endowments, as if defining a staring point for a bargaining within an Edgeworth Box. If instead, as for Bromley, the

institution is mostly about what is best (and then distributes entitlements and

obligations accordingly), what we are talking about is the very shape of the contract curve within the very same Edgeworth Box, the starting point being secondary.

What we see here at play are the different assumptions concerning human behaviour and, ultimately, the human mind. New Institutional Economics approaches institutions assuming self-interested, opportunistic individuals, while here multiple rationalities and incommensurability play a role in making decisions problematic. Bromley’s standpoint on these issues is not much buttressed by experimental finding but rather relies on philosophical Pragmatism. Two aspects are crucial for an understanding of Bromley’s use of Pragmatism in explaining institutions: reason and belief.

Reason is different from cause. The difference between the two is the same that passes between necessity and intention. We can clarify: A stone falls because of gravity, meaning that gravity is the cause behind the stone’s fall. An individual may as well choose course of action A instead of B because that is what maximises his or her total expected utility. Instead of reading out of it that utility is the cause behind the choice for A and against B, Bromley would read that the maximisation of utility, given certain beliefs on the utility promised by A and B respectively, is the reason behind the choice. One reason out of many and, most of all, a reason emerging from a discursive process of “working out” what is best in that specific situation.

This apparent subtlety has powerful implications for the Economics profession. It basically makes efficiency reasoning biased towards one specific kind of reasoning (maximisation of utility) and towards the status quo (as comparative efficiency

requires unchanged preferences). Furthermore, it relegates market mechanisms to a minor role as they do not foresee any process of working out reasons for choices – similarly to what we have already found in Samuels.

A second important point in Bromley’s theorising is the one concerning belief. A central tenet in his account of Pragmatism is that of collective reality construction through experience. Starting point is the realisation that truth is not an attribute of things but rather an attribute of statements about things (Bromley 2008, pg. 8).

Individuals collect “impressions” of the world around them and structure those impressions into “reasonable beliefs” about what is and what goes on out there. For individuals then to act on the basis of those beliefs, three more conditions must be met. First, the belief must be “warranted”, in the sense that it must express the consensus of an authoritative epistemic community. Second, a given belief must be

“valuable” to the one holding it, in the sense that it must give rise to courses of action with positive outcomes. In other words, “bad news” are likelier to be dismissed as unreasonable beliefs than “good news” are. Third, it must provide relief from “doubt and surprise”, meaning that it must address those aspects of a given arrangement that are found “wanting”.

Again we deal with apparent subtleties which however bear strong implications for Economics and for the analysis of particular choices and decisions. A few things are accomplished by treating information in terms of beliefs. One is that information

availability is downgraded from sufficient to “merely” necessary condition. Another thing is that a dynamic element is introduced that goes beyond the emergence of

“new” information and that is characterised at a far deeper level. Finally, a similar conceptual model can accommodate and process competing truth claims – a leitmotiv in environmental matters.

We can appreciate the importance of these two points through a comparison with New Institutional Economics. For the New Institutional Economist, individuals take decisions based on available information, while institutions change whenever new information (including new technologies) shows inefficiencies in the current

arrangement. The fact that the same available information may contain holes and contradictory aspects is not dealt with or, at best, is assumed already sorted out. This means that whenever decisions present contradictory aspects within the available information, the conditions postulated by New Institutional Economics do not apply, so that the analyst is left with nothing to say – for a simple matter of consistency.

The complexities of environmental matters, on their part, make sure that ambiguity is always present in decision-making situations (see on this Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993, 1994), so that conceptual models need to be capable to accommodate this circumstance. Bromley’s model attempts to do just that. What is more, it provides hints on how the controversy can be settled: among competing truth claims, the

“reasonable” one is expected to win, implying it is “warranted” and it is “valuable”, as described above. Here is where Bromley surpasses Samuels: what Samuels left blank concerning the “use of the state” is now filled in by Bromley with an analytical construct that can be put to work so as to enter the arguments of the actual

discussions in favour or against a certain decision.

Bromley’s model allows us to approach decisions on the distribution of entitlements and obligations (as for RQ2) as a matter of competing arguments (as for RQ3) for or against certain arrangements. It also suggests us to check for the reasonability of those argument so as to understand how the one prevails while others fail. All we need to do is to put the arguments within their deliberative setting so as to gather insights into our objective RQ4: “By which means and processes did actors communicate so as to identify a rationale for the distribution of entitlements and obligations concerning the ecosystem of reference?”. We can achieve a better

characterisation of the relationship between deliberation and institutions by turning to the work of Arild Vatn.