Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of Political Economy

Resource Governance, Volume 2

Edited by Daniel H. Cole and Michael D. McGinnis - Contributions by Gwen Arnold; William Blomquist; Daniel H. Cole; Michael Cox; Roy Gardner; Michael D. McGinnis; Elinor Ostrom; Vincent Ostrom; Edella Schlager and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas

Elinor (Lin) Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her pathbreaking research on "economic governance, especially the commons"; but she also made important contributions to several other fields of political economy and public policy. The range of topics she covered and the multiple methods she used might convey the mistaken impression that her body of work is disjointed and incoherent.

This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin, alone or with various coauthors (most
notably including her husband and partner, Vincent), supplemented by others expanding
on their work, brings together the common strands of research that serve to tie her impressive oeuvre together. That oeuvre, together with Vincent's own impressive body of work, has come to define a distinctive school of political-economic thought, the "Bloomington School."

Each of the four volumes is organized around a central theme of Lin’s work. Volume 2 examines the most well-known part of Lin’s legacy: her empirical, analytical, and theoretical work demonstrating that, in many cases, local resource users can solve collective-action problems through common-property management regimes. The volume comprises various papers relating to and building on the findings of her masterpiece, Governing the Commons (1990), including some lesser-known papers. Part I focuses on the all-important distinction between biophysical resources and the humanly devised institutions designed to govern them. Part II moves to the policy level, addressing how various sets of humanly devised institutions work better or worse, in various social and ecological circumstances, for the long-run sustainability of biophysical resources. Part III takes us full circle back to Ostrom’s first work (as part of her PhD) on water resources in Southern California, which was a topic she returned to, along with her students, throughout her career (and totaling more than 50 years’ worth of studies), with the specific intention of gathering data for dynamic (or, at least, comparative static) longitudinal analyses of combined social (including institutional) and ecological change. In sum, this volume presents what is, at least at present, thought to be Lin’s greatest legacy to social science: how resources can be sustainably managed over very long periods of time by the collective action of ordinary people, in addition to or without markets and states.

Lexington Books

Pages: 444 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9108-8 • Hardback • September 2015 • $161.00 • (£125.00)

978-0-7391-9109-5 • eBook • September 2015 • $152.50 • (£117.00)

Subjects: Business & Economics / Economics / Theory, Business & Economics / Economic History, Business & Economics / Economics / General

Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of Political Economy

Resource Governance, Volume 2

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Elinor (Lin) Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her pathbreaking research on "economic governance, especially the commons"; but she also made important contributions to several other fields of political economy and public policy. The range of topics she covered and the multiple methods she used might convey the mistaken impression that her body of work is disjointed and incoherent.

This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin, alone or with various coauthors (most
notably including her husband and partner, Vincent), supplemented by others expanding
on their work, brings together the common strands of research that serve to tie her impressive oeuvre together. That oeuvre, together with Vincent's own impressive body of work, has come to define a distinctive school of political-economic thought, the "Bloomington School."

Each of the four volumes is organized around a central theme of Lin’s work. Volume 2 examines the most well-known part of Lin’s legacy: her empirical, analytical, and theoretical work demonstrating that, in many cases, local resource users can solve collective-action problems through common-property management regimes. The volume comprises various papers relating to and building on the findings of her masterpiece, Governing the Commons (1990), including some lesser-known papers. Part I focuses on the all-important distinction between biophysical resources and the humanly devised institutions designed to govern them. Part II moves to the policy level, addressing how various sets of humanly devised institutions work better or worse, in various social and ecological circumstances, for the long-run sustainability of biophysical resources. Part III takes us full circle back to Ostrom’s first work (as part of her PhD) on water resources in Southern California, which was a topic she returned to, along with her students, throughout her career (and totaling more than 50 years’ worth of studies), with the specific intention of gathering data for dynamic (or, at least, comparative static) longitudinal analyses of combined social (including institutional) and ecological change. In sum, this volume presents what is, at least at present, thought to be Lin’s greatest legacy to social science: how resources can be sustainably managed over very long periods of time by the collective action of ordinary people, in addition to or without markets and states.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 444 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9108-8 • Hardback • September 2015 • $161.00 • (£125.00)

978-0-7391-9109-5 • eBook • September 2015 • $152.50 • (£117.00)

Subjects: Business & Economics / Economics / Theory, Business & Economics / Economic History, Business & Economics / Economics / General

Author

Daniel H. Cole is professor of law and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also serves on the affiliated faculty of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.

Michael D. McGinnis is professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington. He is a senior research fellow (and former director) of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.

Table of Contents

1. Public Goods and Public Choices
Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom
2. An Agenda for the Study of Institutions
Elinor Ostrom
3. How Types of Goods and Property Rights Jointly Affect Collective Action
Elinor Ostrom
4. Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis
Edella Schlager and Elinor Ostrom
5. The Variety of Property Systems and Rights in Natural Resources
Daniel H. Cole and Elinor Ostrom
6. Reformulating the Commons
Elinor Ostrom
7. Coping with Asymmetries in the Commons: Self-Governing Irrigation Systems Can Work
Elinor Ostrom and Roy Gardner
8. Design Principles of Robust Property Rights Institutions: What Have We Learned?
Elinor Ostrom
9. A Review of Design Principles for Community-Based Natural Resource Management
Michael Cox, Gwen Arnold, and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas
10. Developing a Method for Analyzing Institutional Change
Elinor Ostrom
11. The Water Economy and its Organization
Vincent Ostrom
12. Conditions of Legal and Political Feasibility
Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom
13. Deliberation, Learning, and Institutional Change: The Evolution of Institutions in Judicial Settings
William Blomquist and Elinor Ostrom
14. Reflections on “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation”
Elinor Ostrom

Reviews

This edited volume serves an important need, unmet until its publication. The carefully selected works included in the book coherently showcase the key ideas and assumptions that underlie research on CPR management by Elinor Ostrom and other Bloomington School scholars and inform the design principles identified in Governing the Commons (Ostrom, 1990).... The Resource Governance volume, thus, serves two complementary purposes. First, the volume lays a foundation for probing the institutional settings in which voluntary behavior occurs for the management or delivery of community goods and services. Second, the volume has interdisciplinary appeal as a teaching text for courses on nonprofit organizations, voluntary action, and public policy, among many others. By reading this volume, students will learn about the evolution of a highly regarded research program and the key concepts motivating related studies. They will also be able to identify biophysical and social factors that both shape and are shaped by institutions governing collective action.
— Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Daniel Cole and Michael McGinnis have done a magnificent job in putting together the most comprehensive, best structured and most representative collection of works that define the core ideas and insights of the Bloomington School.
— Paul Dragos Aligica, George Mason University

This volume is the perfect companion to Elinor Ostrom’s pathbreaking Governing the Commons. Here you will find papers published before and after she wrote that book, revealing how and why her thinking about natural resource governance developed over time. I found this volume to be loaded with insight, and shining with inspiration.
— Scott Barrett, Columbia University

This second volume on the Bloomington School of Political Economy brings together the key contributions of the Ostroms and their colleagues to understanding natural resource governance more insightfully. Combining older and more recent writings, the collection marks highlights, and also traces a genealogy of the writings of Elinor Ostrom. It will find a place in the shelves of all serious scholars and students of the subject.
— Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan