Re-Enchanting the Commons through Community-Based Governance to Grow Civic Virtue for Social-Ecological Sustainability

Given limited institutional capacities to externally motivate collective action (CA) for social-ecological sustainability, this article considers how organisation of this CA affects internal or autonomous motivation (civic virtue) for this action. Its argument builds on prior Bloomington-school commons scholarship that was influenced by self-determination theory in proposing that civic virtue for CA increases the more our basic psychological needs are supported. Community-based governance grounded in the subsidiarity principle is argued to have advantages over other governance arrangements for affording such support (including in re-enchanting human relations with Nature), and thus for growing civic virtue for CA towards sustainability. For any available level of institutional capacity to externally motivate pro-sustainability behaviours, therefore, organising CA for sustainability through such community-based governance can be expected to yield greater progress towards this goal than other governance arrangements. The argument is illustrated by the case of Australia’s Landcare initiative which seeks to promote self-reliance among rural landholders in working collectively to solve shared problems in sustaining their respective lands.