From restitution to revival: A case of commons re-establishment and restitution in Slovenia

• We evaluate the legal framework in which agrarian commons in Slovenia were re-established and their properties were restituted.
• According to design principles robustness of agrarian commons is affected.
• Members of agrarian commons in Slovenia are not necessary resource users.
• The more flexible legal framework could enable agrarian commons to reach higher level of robustness.

Agrarian commons in Slovenia share a common historical origin with other commons from Central European countries. In the twentieth century, commons in some of these countries experienced the process of abolishing traditional management institutions and nationalising their property. During the transitional period in the 1990s, one third of former agrarian commons were re-established and restituted in Slovenia. In this paper, we evaluate the response of three different types of agrarian commons (forest, pasture and agriculture commons) from three different landscapes (Alps, Pannonia and Mediterranean) in the context of the legal framework in which the commons were restituted. We use the upgraded version of Ostrom's design principles to evaluate the ability of the legal framework to enable the robustness of these historical institutions. It is not the first time that governments misunderstood commons and tried to impose rules which are not common to the commons. In the case of Slovenian agrarian commons, we found that the legal framework is too rigid for re-established agrarian commons and thus affects their efficiency in resource governance. Without changes in the legal framework, the present situation can lead to the decay of these historical institutions.