Elinor Ostrom

Nagendra, H., and E. Ostrom. 2014. Applying the social-ecological system framework to the diagnosis of urban lake commons in Bangalore, India. Ecology and Society 19(2): 67.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06582-190267

Government policies are needed when people's behaviors fail to deliver the public good. Those policies will be most effective if they can stimulate l

Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and difficult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity increases very rapidly as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multi-level challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains of sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a sufficiently rich collection of theories and models, but overlapping definitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. We attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience, and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-scale and multi-level challenges associated with global change.The final version of this article, as published in Ecology and Society, can be viewed online at: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art8

Human-induced causes of forest change occur at multiple scales. Yet, most governance mechanisms are designed at a single level-whether international, national, regional or local-and do not provide effective solutions for the overarching challenge of forest governance. Efforts to "decentralize" governmental arrangements frequently do not recognize the importance of complex, polycentric arrangements and are based on a presumption of a single government at one level taking charge of a policy arena, often ignoring the existence of many vibrant self-governed institutions. Polycentric institutions provide a useful framework for governance, enabling aspects of preferred solutions to be used together in efforts to protect the long-term sustainability of diverse forested social-ecological systems. By considering the interaction between actors at different levels of governance, polycentricity contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the variation in diverse governance outcomes in the management of common-pool resources based on the needs and interests of citizens and the complexity of resources and governance systems at local, regional, national, and global levels. In this paper, we discuss challenges to polycentricity such as the matching of the boundaries of those who benefit, those who contribute with the boundary of the resource. We describe some approaches that have been effectively utilized to address these challenges in forests in various parts of the world. We also provide a brief overview of how the concept of polycentricity helps in the analysis of climate change and the closely related international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through degradation and deforestation (REDD).

Résumé Dans cet article, je retrace le cheminement intellectuel qui fut le mien au cours du dernier demi-siècle, depuis mes premiers efforts visant à comprendre les systèmes polycentriques de gestion de l’eau en Californie. L’étude dans les années 1970 des « industries » polycentriques de police des zones métropolitaines aux États-Unis m’a convaincu un peu plus de la nécessité d’un nouveau cadre d’analyse unifié, compatible avec les enseignements de la théorie des jeux et éloigné des approches monolithiques qui ne reconnaissaient que l’État ou le marché comme forme efficace d’organisation humaine. Ce fut le cadre « Analyse et développement institutionnels » qui nous permit, à de nombreux collègues et à moi, d’entreprendre une série d’études empiriques des cas de gestion de ressources communes à travers le monde. Des expériences menées en laboratoire nous ont davantage renseigné encore sur les raisons qui expliquent pourquoi des individus anonymes et isolés ont tendance à surexploiter les ressources communes. Au fil du temps, un ensemble clair de résultats micro-situationnels a émergé permettant d’identifier les facteurs structurels qui affectent la probabilité d’une coopération sociale accrue. Il est à présent nécessaire de développer des approches plus globales pour étudier plus complètement les facteurs qui favorisent ou nuisent à l’émergence et à la robustesse de ces efforts de gestion auto-organisés au sein de systèmes polycentriques multi-niveaux, notamment dans le domaine écologique. Il nous faut, si nous voulons vraiment la comprendre, pleinement accepter la complexité de la gouvernance des systèmes économiques et écologiques.

Guala raises important questions about the misinterpretation of experimental studies that have found that subjects engage in costly punishment. Instead of positing that punishment is the solution for social dilemmas, earlier research posited that when individuals facing a social dilemma agreed on their own rules and used graduated sanctions, they were more likely to have robust solutions over time.

Among Vincent Ostrom's many contributions to the study of public administration, policy, and political science, the concept of polycentricity remains his single most important legacy. This essay locates the origins of this concept in Ostrom's early research on resource management in the Western United States and demonstrates its continuing influence throughout The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration, The Political Theory of a Compound Republic, and his other major publications. Although typically pigeonholed within the confines of the public choice tradition, Ostrom's body of work should be widely appreciated as an early statement of the critical importance of network forms of governance in democratic societies.