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29Irrigation Systems and Values:Understanding the Process ofSelf-governing Water Resourcesin Northern ItalyB e a t r i c e Ma r e l l iU niversity o f Mi l a na n d University o f Br e s c i aCommon-pool resources (CPRs) are natural orman-made resources shared among different users,a condition that produces a competition for theirutilization leading often (although not necessarily) totheir degradation or even to their destruction (HardinG. 1968) . A vast number of valuable natural resourcesfalls in this category and today shows chronic problemsof overuse. Examples are the world forests, fisheries,water basins, biodiversity, and even the atmosphere.As broad bodies of literature and empirical evidence(Ostrom 1990, 1998, 1999, 2005; Agrawal and Clark2001; Cardenas 2000) have demonstrated, managementof common pool resources implies an institutionalconstruction that would be able to take into accountnot only physical attributes of the resources, but alsoattributes of the communities called to protect them.According to Ostrom (1992, 2005; Ostrom and Ahn2008) among these attributes generally accepted bythe community, there are values of behaviour, vehicleof shared learning and explanations about foundationsof social order (Ostrom V. 1980), crucial variablesof relevance for institutional analysis. After a briefreview of related literature, I am going to analyzehow internal and shared values can affect institutionalevolution in farming irrigation systems. The discussedhypothesis maintains that in small farm communitiesindividual values can interact in the course of timewith the process of water management, leading to aninstitutional evolution that translates these individualdemands for changes in the rules in use applied by thegroups. Such a topic has been addressed analyzing twosmall self-organized farm communities in northernItaly, having as support a qualitative methodologyof investigation based on in-depth interviews. Thisallowed focus on the internal values of the appropriatorsof the resource, key variables for the explanation.As a result, the research found the existence of acommon set of values is extremely useful in increasingthe institutional performance and in controllingopportunistic behaviours. It is also important torecognize genuine trustworthiness appeared as anindependent and non-reducible reason for explaininghow communities achieve collective action compliance.The results also support Ostrom’s (1998, 1999) ideaof a core relationship existing among trust, reputation,and reciprocity. It has been found indeed these variablesare dependent on the community’s past experiences andon the capacity of its members to recognize a majorcommon interest in preserving resources. Once in place,those factors enhance the capacity of a communityto govern its commons and, particularly, to foster theprocess of institutional adaptation that is necessary for along term management of water resources.Theoretical backgroundAccording to Ostrom (1998), elaborating conditionswhere governing and solving social dilemmas (includingcommon pool resources) successfully happen, it ispossible to identify individual attributes at the coreof human behaviours as the following (Ostrom 1998,1999):• the individual expectations regarding otherpeople’s behaviour (trust);• the norms that individuals learn fromsocialization and past experiences (reciprocity);Beatrice Marelli is a member of the political science faculty at the University of Milan and the economics faculty in theDepartment of Social Sciences at the University of Brescia. She is a guest researcher at Humboldt University (Berlin)in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences. Her main interests are related to collective actionproblems, institutional arrangements for environmental sustainability, common-pool resources, and human values.