The Many Lives of Law in the Commons: How Legislation Shapes Collaborative Engagement

While commons research has traditionally emphasized bottom-up, self-organized governance, many commons are increasingly subject to top-down institutional pressures, such as legislation. How these external pressures shape commons governance, however, remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we examine the role of legislation in infrastructure commons, where value depends not only on physical assets but also on how interdependent resources are collectively used and governed across organizational boundaries. Drawing on a qualitative case study of infrastructure commons in Australia, we identify three interrelated pathways of legislative engagement: compliance-driven, reciprocity-driven, and stewardship-driven. We theorize legislation as an enabling framework for commons governance that structures collaboration and activates multiple, co-existing engagement pathways, rather than merely constraining collective action. In doing so, we develop a mechanism-based account of how legal mandates shape collaboration in the commons, showing that legislatively driven commons governance is layered, contingent, and unevenly enacted across actors.