Tragedy of the Anticommons

The tragedy of the commons is overuse: when no one owns the resource, everyone exploits it. The anticommons is the opposite: when too many people own pieces, no one can use the whole. Michael Heller noticed this in post-Soviet Moscow. Stores sat empty because too many parties held partial rights. Each gatekeeper could block; none could permit. Permission from one meant nothing without permission from all.

The anticommons explains gridlock. Drug development stalls because research requires licenses from multiple patent holders, each wanting compensation. Urban development stalls because multiple agencies can veto but none can approve. Academic projects stall because too many collaborators hold rights they won’t release.

The tragedy is that the resource goes unused even though use would benefit everyone, including the gatekeepers. Each holder rationally demands their share; collectively, they kill the opportunity. Bargaining fails because transaction costs are high, holdouts can extract ransom, and the more parties involved, the harder coordination becomes.

This inverts the usual property rights logic. Clear ownership is supposed to solve commons problems by giving someone incentive to maintain the resource. But fragmented ownership creates new problems. There’s a Goldilocks zone: too little ownership invites overexploitation; too much ownership prevents any exploitation.

The anticommons is growing as intellectual property fragments, regulatory layers stack, and stakeholder lists expand. Every new “protection” creates another gatekeeper. The cumulative effect is paralysis: projects die not because anyone opposed them, but because approval required navigating too many vetoes.

Solutions involve bundling rights, creating clearinghouses, or limiting fragmentation ex ante. But once the anticommons exists, reassembling ownership is its own coordination problem. The tragedy, once established, perpetuates itself.