Local Rural Development, Institutional Inaction and the Tragedy of Local Public Goods

Empirical observation can confirm that not all rural communities enjoy an optimal level of local public goods: some public goods are provided more often and in a better quality than others. Given the vital importance of public goods for the welfare of local communities (among which the management of the local natural resource base for sustainable development plays a relevant role), the relation between existing local political institutions and their competences represents a critical issue for the concrete possibilities to properly produce, manage and provide local public goods. A better understanding of the nature of local public goods may increase the awareness of interdependence between local economic, environmental and social development not only in order to stop their continuing eroding but also to increase the possibility to produce local public goods and to design the institutional setting to overcome generic problems of public goods provision.