22/10/2021

Book Review: The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom. Essential Lessons for Collective Action by Erik Nordman (Island Press)

Per Institut Ostrom

By Mauricio Jiménez

Imagine that a species of oyster that is highly valued for its flavor and for generating pearls appears in a lake. If extracting them were easy, an “oyster rush” would unleash in the neighboring town. It’s free! Yet overexploitation would be unsustainable. It’s a problem of collective action around a common resource, i.e., a good whose consumption is rival (its use by one prevents that of others) and not exclusive (open access). For decades, preservation remained in the state-market binarity.

In The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, Erik Nordman, professor of Natural Resource Management at Grand Valley State University in Allendale (Michigan), provides an introduction to Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom’s (1933-2012) pioneering work on collaborative common resource management and shows how her legacy is a third way to solve collective action problems. Throughout its ten chapters, the book never demands an interdisciplinary background to understand it, which makes it accessible. It provides key theoretical notions without being dense and runs through episodes of Ostrom’s life without being just biographical. An agile reading at the intersection of the natural and social sciences.

Chapter 1 addresses the academic debate around The Tragedy of the Commons, a 1968 essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin that summarized and reinforced the common sense of the day about the commons. Concerned about overpopulation, Hardin ruled that every common resource would always be depleted because its users, profit maximizers, would never bear individual costs for the sake of collective sustainability. Only government regulations or privatization would prevent the tragedy. Ostrom disagreed, but she would need more proofs of the vagueness of the dilemma. Precisely, chapters 2 to 5 cover experiences of local commons in groundwater management, lobster fishing, irrigation systems, and forest resources, respectively.

Hardin used “tragedy” as “inescapable fate”. The reason was his view of humans as selfish beings. In the face of scarcity, it was natural to compete, not to cooperate. That’s what local water agencies in the Los Angeles region did long ago when the drought worsened… until they realized that competition would destroy their common water source, the aquifers. So, they formed an association to coordinate, study and manage the resource that, with its own rules, allowed the non-contentious resolution of disputes and, later, assumed functions to develop underground water projects. It happens that civil society has a range of institutions that, varying in the degree of organization and autonomy from the State, are alternatives or complements for managing common resources. In Maine, although Blue Hill Bay required state intervention, territorial “lobster gangs” are crucial in enforcing state laws and their own rules (who fishes where). Informal fishing rules operate as behavioral expectations whose transgression carries social sanctions (e.g., disapproval or ostracism) or even material ones in small communities where nobody wants to lose the esteem of their peers.

In Chapter 4 Nordman presents the eight design principles for successful commons management and the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IADF) posed by Ostrom. The IADF is the methodology for the study and standardized comparison of all types of commons. The design principles are illustrated by the ancient Tribunal de les Aigües in Valencia, a paradigm of community organization that has administrative and justice functions on irrigation. The Water Court is (1) physically and socially delimited, circumscribed to canal districts and integrated by owners and tenants; (2) its rules of access and use are defined locally; (3) it is participatory, with assemblies, executive committees and syndics; (4) there is monitoring with accountability; (5) considers gradual penalties for transgressors; (6) it manages conflicts, the court’s role; (7) it’s right to self-organize is recognized, in its case by the Spanish Constitution; (8) and it’s made up of layers of governance. How did it thrive? As the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Project found, the characteristics of the resource and its users, the (in)formal rules and their application are vital for collaborative management to report what would’ve been irreproducible benefits under private ownership. The secret is that the emergent properties resulting from the interaction of the components of the commons allow adaptability to the community’s cultural evolution. In Bloomington, May Creek Farm is still an intentional community, but as its residents grew, left, or arrived, their values changed and with it their rules about forestry, individual parcels, etc.

Chapter 6 discusses two essential concepts in Ostrom’s work using the planet, the global common. Given the climate threat, immediate but not uniform action is urgently required. Polycentricity, a decision-making system dispersed in several independent centers with shared principles, allows a multi-stakeholder, multilevel and participatory governance where the experimentation of contextually informed measures and their comparative evaluation flourish. The enforcement of the rules is important as well. Compliance with the Paris Agreement, a voluntary commitment, relies on behavioral expectations applicable via honoring and shaming, positive competition, internal political pressure or trade sanctions. Trust and reciprocity, incentives for collective action are built on monitoring and rewards/punishments. The latter links to chapter 7, referring to the application of club theory to voluntary programs such as the 2030 Districts Project, a network that promotes the reduction of the ecological footprint of the buildings of the cities that comprise it. The theory sees the programs as clubs where you pay to access benefits (non-rival and exclusive). The cost of the 2030 Districts Project membership is the emission control equipment; benefits, preferential treatment, prestige and future savings.

Chapters 8 and 9 review creative uses of Ostrom’s theories to outer space and the digital world. Space resources (satellites, the Moon, orbits, etc.) can be thought of as public, private, “common” (it’s tricky) or club goods. Two disquieting examples are space lots for satellites and debris collision monitoring, where the absence of cooperation would lead to Blade Runner’s 2022. Digital information is also manageable. Free and open-source software (FOSS) is an interesting public good (non-rival and non-exclusive) because it is voluntary and coproduced. Coproduction is the use of inputs contributed by individuals from different organizations when producing a good/service. FOSS Linux is free to use, edit, and distribute; its tragedy would be the lack of coders to maintain the software. Like any network of elements that produce their own pattern of behavior over time, that is, like any system, it requires control and communication for its adaptability to changes. Therefore, cyberspace also requires governance, rules about who generates content, in what programming language, access permissions, dissemination, etc.

The final chapter is dedicated to the awarding of the 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Ostrom’s work is inserted in the New Institutional Economics, a tradition interested in the influence of institutions (formal or informal rules) in the functioning of economic actors, and which also combines the complexity of the real world with formal-theoretical aspects of neoclassical economics. Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist who was tried to be dissuaded from an academic career and whose application to a graduate program in Economics was rejected, became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. The sweet irony.

One of the strengths of the book is that Nordman awakens and maintains the reader’s interest in the conceptual elements through cases in which the theory is appreciated off the board and that teaches to see things from another perspective. The story of the taxi drivers in Nairobi organizing to maintain profit margins is an excellent example of that. The everydayness and simplicity of the case increase the perception of usefulness of the book’s themes. Probably, the chapter on voluntary environmental programs will be the one with the greatest impact among those interested in social entrepreneurship. The explanation of club theory can be read as tips to turn private initiatives into successful responses to collective action problems: how to improve the scope of the project, what reward mechanisms to use, what not to do to those who doesn’t reach the voluntarily set goal, how to increase cooperation and cohesion among participants. The 2030 Districts Project can easily inspire the development of similar initiatives, either from the private sector or from the civil society’s organized groups on issues such as recycling, construction of green roofs or installation of solar panels; bearing in mind that “[t]he most successful programs might be lenient enough to encourage broad participation and strict enough to improve environmental performance” (p. 136).

From an educational point of view, the book is quality material for starting theoretical discussions. For example, there are a number of commonalities between Ostrom’s work and Friedrich Hayek’s. Although their gazes were in different areas, in recognizing that information is dispersed in society, both emphasize that there are scenarios in which the decentralization of decision-making is preferable due to the contextual and tacit knowledge (know-how) that can be had about a phenomenon on a closer level; which would lead to a better adaptability to change. It’s the knowledge problem1 of central planning. The routinary prescription of top-down solutions to collective action dilemmas ignores the viability of bottom-up responses, thus wasting the use of knowledge from society. Ostrom was aware of that. Nordman mentions that she was “skeptical about the effectiveness of top-down regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” (p. 110), a skepticism that extends to other fields since she had found that bottom-up responses could be feasible and efficient.

The logical consequence of that epistemic vision is to embrace participation and deliberation as discovery mechanisms in decision-making. They are inclusive democratic features applicable in different organizations, spaces and levels. In order with the design principles number 2 and 3, the Tribunal de les Aigües, the West Basin Water Association in Los Angeles or May Creek Farm embody these ideals for the benefit of their members, but the same does not happen in all commons. Elizabeth Anderson (2006) has explained how the suppression of female participation in the decision-making spaces of community forestry groups in India and Nepal impairs the health of women, the education of girls, the management of the commons, and the community itself. It would have been valuable if the book included failed or problematic cases to better appreciate the negative effects of exclusionary institutions.

A fascinating aspect of the book is the mention of Ostrom’s systemism. She conceived communities as complex social-ecological systems capable of producing their own patterns of behavior. Nordman states that “[f]or the most part, people did not sit down and intentionally codify these principles. Rather, the design principles emerged from sustained interactions over time. The communities retained the rules and norms that worked and jettisoned those that didn’t” (p. 182). In Hayekian jargon, the governance of the commons would be a (sub)cosmos, a spontaneous (sub)order that results from human action but not from human design; and the informal rules that coordinate collective action within it would be the product of a cultural group selection process (Hayek, 1967).

Like Ostrom, Hayek (1973) saw cosmos as complex systems subject to institutional evolution, which made them abstract, indeterminate and devoid of purpose (they have a function, not an end). This was inconceivable from a reductionist approach like Hardin’s. As Nordman points out, “[r]esource-using communities are not simply amalgamations of individuals. Communities themselves have characteristics and properties that emerge from the daily conversations and engagements of their residents” (p. 59). Both Ostromian and Hayekian2 ontology have systemic features that distinguish them from other approaches linked to methodological individualism, whose ontology is usually atomistic, hence, limited. “[S]ystemism promotes attempts to analyze systems in terms of their composition, environment and structure, as well as to reveal the mechanisms of their formation and decomposition”3 (Bunge, 2012, p. 324). That’s what the IADF does to understand commons. It doesn’t isolate the users; it studies them as interlinked with each other and with the resource that gives rise to institutions. The cosmos’s emergent properties that arise from the feedback are irreducible to its components.

On the methodological side, the book gives lessons on the importance of interdisciplinarity in scientific work. Ostrom sought to combine the knowledge trapped in the specialization “silos” of the academy, so she summoned researchers from different disciplines and trained in different methods. It is also worth to notice her analytical rigor of studying failed and successful cases, and the constant process of falsification and theoretical updating based on new evidence. Ostrom confronted the theory with real world scenarios –that’s field work– and found that social-ecological systems are too complex to respond to their challenges from reductionist approaches isolated from reality. Her findings are a reminder of the fallibility of self-evident truths, common senses, and binary thinking.

On a more personal level, the author shows Ostrom’s intellectual honesty. He continually quotes her indicating that her findings do not represent a solution for every problem, “there are no panaceas”, “there is no ‘one size fits all’”. It is even specified that Ostrom clarified that she had not refuted Hardin, but showed that he exceeded in discarding the community management of a resource. The book offers the reader that same sincerity, as by balancing that “[c]ommon property is not necessarily better or worse than private or public ownership” (p. 100) or by noting that “the successful long-term management of a commons is the exception rather than the rule” (p. 105).

Erik Nordman alternates between the history of a group of community initiatives aimed at maintaining common-pool resources and Ostrom’s academic career. In the middle of this narrative braid, the reader will discover how Ostromian theoretical contributions to political economy can be quite useful in the face of environmental problems, the challenges of the new space age, and cybersecurity and information threats in a digital world. The book would be particularly beneficial for intermediate-level undergraduate students, graduate students, activists, social entrepreneurs, policy makers, and anyone interested in issues of social cooperation and collective action. Definitively, a productive and entertaining reading.

Notes

1 – The denomination was made by Don Lavoie. See: Hayek, F. A. (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society. The American Economic Review, 35(4), 519–530. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1809376
2 – Consult: Zwirn, G. (2007). “Methodological Individualism or Methodological Atomism: The Case of Friedrich Hayek.” History of Political Economy, 39(1): 47–80. DOI:10.1215/00182702-2006-005

References

Anderson, E. (2006). The Epistemology of Democracy. Episteme, 3(1-2), 8-22. DOI:10.3366/epi.2006.3.1-2.8
Bunge, M. (2012). “Una cosmovisión sistémica”. Tratado de Filosofía. Volumen 4. Ontología II: Un mundo de sistemas. Barcelona: Editorial Gedisa, pp. 317-326.
Hayek, F. A. (1967). “The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design”. Studies in Philosophy: Politics and Economics. London: Routledge, pp. 96-105.
Hayek, F. A. (1973). “Cosmos and Taxis”. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Vol I. Rules and Order. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 35-54.