Communities are often presented as the relevant level for a sustainable management of natural resources that benefits users and non-users. We will first discuss the theoretical rationale behind this claim as well as its limitations, linking the literature on commons to classic models in industrial organizations. The second part of the talk will delve into broad-scale case studies of forest and fisheries management. It will shed light on underlying mechanisms that may explain the success or the failure of community management and on the institutional variations that mediate the impact of economic drivers of natural resource extraction on environmental and social outcomes.