Governing the Commons

Summary

(summary TBA)

Quotes

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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 458-59  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 05:46 PM

The presumption that an external Leviathan is necessary to avoid tragedies of the commons leads to recommendations that central governments control most natural resource systems. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 516-21  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:42 PM

Now each herder will be playing a game against nature in a smaller terrain, rather than a game against another player in a larger terrain. The herders now will need to invest in fences and their maintenance, as well as in monitoring and sanctioning activities to enforce their division of the grazing area (B. Field 1984, 1985b). It is presumed that each herder will now choose X/2 animals to graze as a result of his own profit incentive. 11 This assumes that the meadow is perfectly homogeneous over time in its distribution of available fodder. If rainfall occurs erratically, one part of the grazing area may be lush with growth one year, whereas another part of the area may be unable to support X/2 animals. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 525-26  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:43 PM

However, the setup costs for a new market or a new insurance scheme would be substantial and will not be needed so long as the herders share fodder and risk by jointly sharing a larger grazing area. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 530-32  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:43 PM

As Colin Clark has pointed out, the “’tragedy of the commons’ has proved particularly difficult to counteract in the case of marine fishery resources where the establishment of individual property rights is virtually out of the question” 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 538-39  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:44 PM

Analysts who find an empirical situation with a structure presumed to be a commons dilemma often call for the imposition of a solution by an external actor: The “only way” to solve a commons dilemma is by doing X. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 543-44  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:44 PM

Both centralization advocates and privatization advocates accept as a central tenet that institutional change must come from outside and be imposed on the individuals affected. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 544-45  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:44 PM

Despite sharing a faith in the necessity and efficacy of “the state” to change institutions so as to increase efficiency, the institutional changes they recommend could hardly be further apart. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 549-52  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:45 PM

I argue that “getting the institutions right” is a difficult, time-consuming, conflict-invoking process. It is a process that requires reliable information about time and place variables as well as a broad repertoire of culturally acceptable rules. New institutional arrangements do not work in the field as they do in abstract models unless the models are well specified and empirically valid and the participants in a field setting understand how to make the new rules work. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 552-54  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:45 PM

Instead of presuming that the individuals sharing a commons are inevitably caught in a trap from which they cannot escape, I argue that the capacity of individuals to extricate themselves from various types of dilemma situations varies from situation to situation. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 555-56  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:45 PM

Instead of basing policy on the presumption that the individuals involved are helpless, I wish to learn more from the experience of individuals in field settings. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 558-60  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:45 PM

Institutions are rarely either private or public – “the market” or “the state.” Many successful CPR institutions are rich mixtures of “private-like” and “public-like” institutions defying classification in a sterile dichotomy. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 561-63  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:46 PM

By “successful,” I mean institutions that enable individuals to achieve productive outcomes in situations where temptations to free-ride and shirk are ever present. A competitive market – the epitome of private institutions – is itself a public good. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 576-78  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:47 PM

Contracts are not enforceable, however, unless agreed to unanimously by the herders. Any proposal made by one herder that did not involve an equal sharing of the carrying capacity and of enforcement costs would be vetoed by the other herder in their negotiations. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 593-96  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:48 PM

In N-person settings, all professional athletic leagues face problems similar to those illustrated here. During the play of a professional game, the temptation to cheat and break the rules is ever present. Further, accidents do happen, and rules get broken, even by players who were intending to follow the rules. Athletic leagues typically employ private monitors to enforce their rules. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 597-600  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:48 PM

As soon as we allow the possibility of a private party to take on the role of an external enforcer, the nature of the “solution” offered by Game 5 to the commons dilemma begins to generate a rich set of alternative applications. A self-financed contract-enforcement game allows the participants in the situation to exercise greater control over decisions about who will be allowed to graze and what limits will be placed on the number of animals, as compared with either Game 2 or Game 3. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 600-603  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:48 PM

If the parties use a private arbitrator, they do not let the arbitrator impose an agreement on them. The arbitrator simply helps the parties find methods to resolve disputes that arise within the set of working rules to which the parties themselves have agreed. Arbitrators, courts, and other arrangements for enforcement and dispute resolution make it possible for individuals to initiate long-term arrangements that they could not otherwise undertake. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 625-26  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:50 PM

When the enforcement mechanism is not an external governmental agency, some analysts presume that there is no enforcement. That is why Game 5 is mistaken for Game 1. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 658-62  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:51 PM

All other fishers can expect that the assigned fisher will be at the spot bright and early. Consequently, an effort to cheat on the system by traveling to a good spot on a day when one is assigned to a poor spot has little chance of remaining undetected. Cheating on the system will be observed by the very fishers who have rights to be in the best spots and will be willing to defend their rights using physical means if necessary. Their rights will be supported by everyone else in the system. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 664-67  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:52 PM

Although this is not a private-property system, rights to use fishing sites and duties to respect these rights are well defined. And though it is not a centralized system, national legislation that has given such cooperatives jurisdiction over “local arrangements” has been used by cooperative officials to legitimize their role in helping to devise a workable set of rules. That local officials accept the signed agreement each year also enhances legitimacy. The actual monitoring and enforcing of the rules, however, are left to the fishers. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 683-87  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:53 PM

The differences may have to do with factors internal to a given group. The participants may simply have no capacity to communicate with one another, no way to develop trust, and no sense that they must share a common future. Alternatively, powerful individuals who stand to gain from the current situation, while others lose, may block efforts by the less powerful to change the rules of the game. Such groups may need some form of external assistance to break out of the perverse logic of their situation. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 688-92  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:53 PM

Some participants do not have the autonomy to change their own institutional structures and are prevented from making constructive changes by external authorities who are indifferent to the perversities of the commons dilemma, or may even stand to gain from it. Also, there is the possibility that external changes may sweep rapidly over a group, giving them insufficient time to adjust their internal structures to avoid the suboptimal outcomes. Some groups suffer from perverse incentive systems that are themselves the results of policies pursued by central authorities. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 693-95  | Added on Thursday, June 21, 2018, 06:53 PM

as long as analysts presume that individuals cannot change such situations themselves, they do not ask what internal or external variables can enhance or impede the efforts of communities of individuals to deal creatively and constructively with perverse problems such as the tragedy of the commons. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 700-706  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 02:57 AM

Those advocating the private-property approach presume that the most efficient use patterns for CPRs will actually result from dividing the rights to access and control such resources. Systematic empirical studies have shown that private organization of firms dealing in goods such as electricity, transport, and medical services tends to be more efficient than governmental organization of such firms; for a review of this literature, see De Alessi (1980). Whether private or public forms are more efficient in industries in which certain potential beneficiaries cannot be excluded is, however, a different question. We are concerned with the types of institutions that will be most efficient for governing and managing diverse CPRs for which at least some potential beneficiaries cannot be excluded. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 710-12  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 02:58 AM

An assertion that central regulation is necessary tells us nothing about the way a central agency should be constituted, what authority it should have, how the limits on its authority should be maintained, how it will obtain information, or how its agents should be selected, motivated to do their work, and have their performances monitored and rewarded or sanctioned. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 719-22  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 02:59 AM

In the most general sense, all institutional arrangements can be thought of as games in extensive form. As such, the particular options available, the sequencing of those options, the information provided, and the relative rewards and punishments assigned to different sequences of moves can all change the pattern of outcomes achieved. Further, the particular structure of the physical environment involved also will have a major impact on the structure of the game and its results. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 729-34  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 03:00 AM

In some of these countries, national agencies issued elaborate regulations concerning the use of forests, but were unable to employ sufficient numbers of foresters to enforce those regulations. The foresters who were employed were paid such low salaries that accepting bribes became a common means of supplementing their income. The consequence was that nationalization created open-access resources where limited-access common-property resources had previously existed. The disastrous effects of nationalizing formerly communal forests have been well documented for Thailand (Feeny 1988a), Niger (Thomson 1977; Thomson, Feeny, and Oakerson 1986), Nepal (Arnold and Campbell 1986; Messerschmidt 1986), and India (Gadgil and Iyer 1989). 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 756-58  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 03:03 AM

Unfortunately, many analysts – in academia, special-interest groups, governments, and the press – still presume that common-pool problems are all dilemmas in which the participants themselves cannot avoid producing suboptimal results, and in some cases disastrous results. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 759-62  | Added on Friday, June 22, 2018, 03:04 AM

whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts. Examples of self-organized enterprises abound. Most law firms are obvious examples: A group of lawyers will pool their assets to purchase a library and pay for joint secretarial and research assistance. They will develop their own internal governance mechanisms and formulas for allocating costs and benefits to the partners. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 852-54  | Added on Sunday, July 01, 2018, 10:03 PM

The term “common-pool resource” refers to a natural or man-made resource system that is sufficiently large as to make it costly (but not impossible) to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 862-64  | Added on Sunday, July 01, 2018, 10:04 PM

The distinction between the resource as a stock and the harvest of use units as a flow is especially useful in connection with renewable resources, where it is possible to define a replenishment rate. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 867-69  | Added on Sunday, July 01, 2018, 10:05 PM

Following Plott and Meyer (1975), I call the process of withdrawing resource units from a resource system “appropriation.” Those who withdraw such units are called “appropriators.” 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 888-92  | Added on Wednesday, July 04, 2018, 03:12 AM

It is costly (and in some cases infeasible) to exclude one appropriator of a resource system from improvements made to the resource system itself. All appropriators benefit from maintenance performed on an irrigation canal, a bridge, or a computer system whether they contribute or not. Failure to distinguish between the subtractability of the resource units and the jointness of the resource system has in the past contributed to confusion about the relationship of CPRs to public or collective goods. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 896-99  | Added on Wednesday, July 04, 2018, 03:13 AM

The relatively high costs of physically excluding joint appropriators from the resource or from improvements made to the resource system are similar to the high costs of excluding potential beneficiaries from public goods. This shared attribute is responsible for the ever present temptation to free-ride that exists in regard to both CPRs and public goods. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 901-4  | Added on Wednesday, July 04, 2018, 03:14 AM

one’s use of a weather forecast does not subtract from the availability of that forecast to others, just as one’s consumption of public security does not reduce the general level of security available in a community. 4 “Crowding effects” and “overuse” problems are chronic in CPR situations, but absent in regard to pure public goods. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 926-28  | Added on Wednesday, July 04, 2018, 03:17 AM

A major source of uncertainty is lack of knowledge. The exact structure of the resource system itself – its boundary and internal characteristics – must be established. Ascertaining the structure of the resource system may come about as a by-product of extended use and careful observation, 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 953-57  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:35 PM

The discount rates applied to future yields derived from a particular CPR may differ substantially across various types of appropriators. In a fishery, for example, the discount rates of local fishers who live in nearby villages will differ from the discount rates of those who operate the larger trawlers, who may fish anywhere along a coastline. The time horizons of the local fishers, in relation to the yield of the inshore fishery, extend far into the future. They hope that their children and their children’s children can make a living in the same location. More mobile fishers, on the other hand, can go on to other fishing grounds when local fish are no longer available. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 957-60  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:36 PM

Discount rates are affected by the levels of physical and economic security faced by appropriators. Appropriators who are uncertain whether or not there will be sufficient food to survive the year will discount future returns heavily when traded off against increasing the probability of survival during the current year. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 995  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:44 PM

That individuals utilize contingent strategies in many complex and uncertain field settings is an important foundation for later analysis. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 996-98  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:45 PM

The internal world of individual choice that I use is illustrated in Figure 2.1 . Four internal variables – expected benefits, expected costs, internal norms, and discount rates – affect an individual’s choice of strategies. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1019-22  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:50 PM

If one irrigator allocates time and materials to repairing a broken control gate in an irrigation canal, all other irrigators using that canal are affected by that action, whether or not they want the control gate fixed and whether or not they contribute anything to the repair. The key fact of life for coappropriators is that they are tied together in a lattice of interdependence so long as they continue to share a single CPR. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1024-27  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:51 PM

When appropriators act independently in relationship to a CPR generating scarce resource units, the total net benefits they obtain usually will be less than could have been achieved if they had coordinated their strategies in some way. At a minimum, the returns they receive from their appropriation efforts will be lower when decisions are made independently than they would have been otherwise. At worst, they can destroy the CPR itself. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1029-32  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:52 PM

... when a number of individuals have a common or collective interest – when they share a single purpose or objective – individual, unorganized action [either will] not be able to advance that common interest at all, or will not be able to advance that interest adequately. (Olson 1965, p. 7; emphasis added) 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1032-34  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:52 PM

Prisoners who have been placed in separate cells and cannot communicate with one another are also in an interdependent situation in which they must act independently. Acting independently in this situation is the result of coercion, not its absence. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1035-37  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:52 PM

At the most general level, the problem facing CPR appropriators is one of organizing: how to change the situation from one in which appropriators act independently to one in which they adopt coordinated strategies to obtain higher joint benefits or reduce their joint harm. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1037-39  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:53 PM

That does not;.’ necessarily mean creating an organization. Organizing is a process; an organization is the result of that process. An organization of individuals who constitute an ongoing enterprise is only one form of organization that can result from the process of organizing. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1039-40  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:54 PM

The core of organization involves changes that order activities so that sequential, contingent, and frequency-dependent decisions are introduced 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1053-54  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:57 PM

The theory of the firm and the theory of the state can each provide an explanation for one way in which collective action can be achieved. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1062-64  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 07:58 PM

After paying each of the agents, the entrepreneur retains residual profits (or absorbs losses). Consequently, the entrepreneur is highly motivated to organize the activity in a manner as efficient as possible. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1080-82  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:00 PM

There is no mechanism, such as a competitive market, that would exert pressure on the ruler to design efficient institutions. The ruler may face rebellion if the measures selected are too repressive, or military defeat if the realm is not adequately organized to do well in warfare. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1091-93  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:01 PM

no equivalently well developed and generally accepted theory provides a coherent account for how a set of principals, faced with a collective-action problem, can solve (1) the problem of supplying a new set of institutions, (2) the problem of making credible commitments, and (3) the problem of mutual monitoring. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1146-47  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:07 PM

No one wants to be a “sucker,” keeping a promise that everyone else is breaking. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1147-48  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:07 PM

External coercion is a frequently cited theoretical solution to the problem of commitment 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1150-52  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:08 PM

External coercion is at times a sleight-of-hand solution, because the theorist does not address what motivates the external enforcer to monitor behavior and impose sanctions. That is not, however, the issue at hand; it will be discussed later. The immediate issue is that a self-organized group must solve the commitment problem without an external enforcer. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1185-86  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:13 PM

Scholars addressing the problem of collective action frequently presume (1) that the underlying structure is always that of a PD game and (2) that one level of analysis is sufficient. 
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Canto Classics) (Elinor Ostrom)
- Highlight Loc. 1187-92  | Added on Sunday, July 08, 2018, 08:13 PM

part of the strategy pursued in this inquiry is to start from an alternative set of initial presumptions: 1 Appropriators in CPR situations face a variety of appropriation and provision problems whose structures vary from one setting to another, depending on the values of underlying parameters. 2 Appropriators must switch back and forth across arenas and levels of analysis. These presumptions lead me to examine questions in a manner somewhat different from that of an analyst using the “normal” presuppositions of collective-action theory,