Based on the state-of-the art and considering its foreseen impact on both science and society, the UNICA-project aims to develop a unified theory on the resilience of ICAs by focusing on their scope, scale and size in the long-term through a threefold approach:

1. Scope: Creating a spatio-temporal taxonomy of archetypes of ICAs for the past millennium for all sectors in order to understand how broad the ICA as a governance model has been applied, building on their similarities in institutional design (Subproject 1). This part of the project will be developed by the Principal Investigator (Prof. Dr. Tine De Moor) in collaboration with the team members.
2. Scale: Analysing the scaling strategies of ICAs over time in order to estimate the popularity of various archetypes over time and space and to analyse which internal (size and heterogeneity of members and resources) and external factors (economic, environmental, political and demographic factors) may explain their entry, adaptation (split/merge) and dissolution/exit (Subproject 2)
3. Size: Detecting the relationship between size and heterogeneity of both members and resources and their impact on the institutional design of ICAs in order to understand to what extent (individual examples of) archetypes with varying objectives differed in strategies to prevent freeriding and to promote resilience (Subprojects 3 and 4).