Elinor Ostrom, who shares this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics, wins the prize for her work studying the ways that people successfully organize themselves to manage “Common Pool Resources” (CPRs) such as fisheries, water, forest, air quality, etc. I hope she’ll make it to the prize-winners’ podium in time to amplify her voice and give us a hand organizing ourselves collaboratively to fix any number of public policy problems with CPRs. Pasted below is a snip from a summary of her 1990 book “Governing the Commons”. There’s a good summary of this book here
+++Ostrom found that groups that are able to organize and govern their behavior successfully are marked by the following design principles:
+Group boundaries are clearly defined.
+Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions.
+Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules.
+The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities.
+A system for monitoring member’s behavior exists; the community members themselves undertake this monitoring.
+A graduated system of sanctions is used.
+Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms.
+For CPRs that are parts of larger systems: appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises. +++
Very cool…