The commons is the scene where politics plays itself out because the commons is contested. Every question about who can and who cannot use the commons is political: resolved by a contest (agon) among competing parties. The politics of the commons looks at how those contests are resolved. Or more accurately the various ways in which those contests might be resolved in an abstract sense.

The specific content(?) of the contest is part of history. But the theoretical differences among the various structure(s) within which that contest is conducted—and how those differences influence the result of the political contest—is examined by the inquiry into the politics of the commons.