Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work on common pool property rights has implications for some of the most pressing sustainability issues of the twenty-first century — from tackling climate change to maintaining cyberspace. In this book, Derek Wall critically examines Ostrom’s work, while also exploring the following questions: is it possible to combine insights rooted in methodological individualism with a theory that stresses collectivist solutions? Is Ostrom’s emphasis on largely local solutions to climate change relevant to a crisis propelled by global factors?
This volume situates her ideas in terms of the constitutional analysis of her partner Vincent Ostrom and wider institutional economics. It outlines her key concerns, including a radical research methodology, commitment to indigenous people and the concept of social-ecological systems. Ostrom is recognised for producing a body of work which demonstrates how people can construct rules that allow them to exploit the environment in an ecologically sustainable way, without the need for governmental regulation, and this book argues that in a world where ecological realities increasingly threaten material prosperity, such scholarship provides a way of thinking about how humanity can create truly sustainable development.
Given the inter-disciplinary nature of Ostrom’s work, this book will be relevant to those working in the areas of environmental economics, political economy, political science and ecology.
Author(s): Derek Wall
Series: Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics, 33
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: London
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 An accidental life?
Introduction
An accidental life?
Garrett Hardin, Karl Marx and the tragedy of the commons
From Adam Smith to Amartya Sen
The sustainable economics of Elinor Ostrom
2 Signs and wonders
Alexis de Tocqueville
Lasswell and Kaplan
John R. Commons
Friedrich Hayek
Michael Polanyi
James Buchanan
Ernst Mayr
Selten and Axelrod
Herbert Simon
The Haudenosaunee Confederation
Jane Jacobs
Ostrom beyond Ostrom
3 On method
Beyond positivism
Institutional analysis and development
A grammar of institutions
Institutional analysis and development in practice
Game theory and formal modelling
Experimental methods
Agent based models
Case studies
Large scale quantitative techniques
Satellite surveys
Methodological individualism
Multiple methods, plural practices
4 Au contraire, Monsieur Hardin!
Classifying the commons
The tragedy of the commons?
The triumph of the commons?
Designing successful commons
Clearly defined boundaries
Cost benefit equivalence
Locally adapted rules for collective governance
Monitoring
Graduated sanctions
Conflict resolution mechanisms
The right of users to organize
Nested structures
Rapid exogenous change
Transmission failure
Blueprint thinking
Corruption and rent seeking behaviour
5 Green from the grassroots: social-ecological systems
Global environmental crisis
Social-ecological systems
Polycentric solutions to climate change
Situating the ecological economics of Elinor Ostrom
6 Knowledge commons
Commons, anti-commons and the common
A short history of the future
Crafting the knowledge economy the Ostrom way
An IAD guide to internet success
7 The political economy of the commons in physical goods
Sharing and sustainability
Coproduction of physical goods
Financial commons
Health commons
Common pool production and consumption
8 Politics without romance
Commons, capitalism, conflict and colonialism
Ostrom on political power
The constitutional politics of Vincent Ostrom
From the republic to the commons
The politics of the commons
The politics of commons and contestation
9 A new science for a new world
Introduction
Aligică and Boettke on challenging institutional analysis and development
David Harvey’s challenge to polycentricism
Eoin Flaherty on modes of production, metabolism and resilience
Arun Agrawal’s challenge to institutionalism
Elinor Ostrom’s contribution to a sustainable economics
A new science for a new world?
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
