Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

lingua English

Pubblicato il 10 Luglio 2015 da Cambridge University Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-107-56978-2

(1 recensione)

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.

13 edizioni

nemobis ha recensito Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action di Elinor Ostrom

Review of 'Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action' on 'Goodreads'

5 stelle

A seminal work which is altogether pleasant to read. Mandatory reading for anyone involved in common goods management and thinking (including water, environment, cultural commons with copyright or copyleft, online communities).

Ostrom shows that there are many different ways to manage common goods (or specifically common pool resources, CPR) and various kinds of local, decentralised or custom-based governance systems have proved successful. The dychotomy between privatization and state control is a false one because it's based on equally impossible assumptions (perfectly rational market actors, perfect monitoring by an omniscient central authority), as even a modicum of game theory is able to show. Ostrom provides a theory, or rather a framework (as she prefers to say) to understand a series of case studies on the ground and attempt to reproduce successful governance systems in other cases with limited disruption.