Conference Paper

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10535/4

Browse By

Now showing 1 - 60 of 4066

Water Resource Management: Regional Planning
(1963) Ostrom, Vincent
"An analysis of American experience in water resource management and regional planning afford a useful opportunity to examine the development of American institutions in an important segment of American society. The ways that resources are exploited for human purposes is an important key to an understanding of institutional arrangements and public policies in any society. New institutional arrangements and accommodations are initiated as new problems and opportunities arise in the development of water resource potentials. At the same time, many of the earlier institutional arrangements maintain their continuity of operation within the changing social scene. "This analysis will first turn to a consideration of patterns of local development undertaken by individual proprietors, private agencies, and by local government agencies. These developments largely involved single- purpose projects concerned with the consumptive use of water for on-the-land developments. The fullest development of water resource management by local agencies can be illustrated by reference to the experience of the Southern California metropolitan region. Efforts to develop regional solutions in some of the large inter-state watershed basins will then be explored. Specific references will be made to experience in the Tennessee valley and in the Columbia basin."
Property, Proprietorship and Politics: Law and the Structure of Strategic Opportunities in the California Water Industry
(1963) Ostrom, Vincent
"In any going society, the patterns of economic behavior are maintained by virtue of certain rule of conduct or law which formulate the range of strategic opportunities that are available to those who function within that society. Law places parameters upon conduct by indicating the boundaries of lawful and unlawful behavior, provides a basic structure of incentives for ordering the behavior of all persons in a society, and affords certain facilities for the pursuit of opportunities. Such legal concepts as 'rights' in relations to 'goods' and 'remedies' in relation to 'injuries' or 'wrongs' clearly reflect a structure of incentives with reference to an implicit moral order. The existence of arrangement for the negotiation and adjudication of interest, in relation to such concepts, constitute the institutional facilities that shape the strategic opportunities available in any society. "If law is to be effective, it must be enforceable. An unenforceable rule enunciating a 'Thou shall not' proposition is no more than a pious platitude. On the other hand, the imposition of unarticulated rile of conduct without recourse to the formal rules of law may be an exercise of irresponsible power, tyranny, or brute force. A rule of law exists only when enforceable rules of conduct are made explicit and when the behavior of all participants in a social structure can be held accountable in reference to the explicit standards of the law."
Western Water Institutions in a Contemporary Perspective
(1964) Ostrom, Vincent
"The imperative necessity of today in considering western water institutions is a critical assessment of where we are and a careful identification of some of the problems which must be faced if we are to make intelligent use of the region's water resources. In this essay, I would like to begin a critical reconsideration of basic water policies and institutional arrangements by pointing up some of the incongruities between transitional formulations and contemporary requirements. I have the profoundest respect for the intelligence and imagination that went into the formulation of the institutional arrangements which have done so much to facilitate the development of the American West. But, the achievements of former generations do not remove the responsibility for using our best intelligence in analyizing contemporary developments and for using our most effective imagination in considering the future course of events. At the risk of oversimplification, I would like to challenge a few implicit assumptions and basic commitments which seem to pervade much of our traditional approach to contemporary water problems."
Economics of Competition for Water
(1965) Davis, Robert K.
"Each day something like 300 billion gallons of fresh water is withdrawn for use in homes, factories, businesses, or on irrigated farmland. These quantities are withdrawn from water courses, kept in circulation sometimes for several cycles of re-use, and then either returned to a water course, which may be a ground water aquifer, or depleted into the atmosphere. Some water is, of course, embodied in the products of manufacture. There is both immensity and great diversity in the uses we make of the water we withdrawn from our lakes, streams and underground aquifers."
Institutional Failure and Reform: A Problem in Economic and Political Analysis of Water Resource Development
(1967) Ostrom, Vincent
(From pp. 1, 2, & 8): "The purpose of this conference is to consider the question of what special contribution, if any, can political scientists make to the analysis and formulation of public policy? At an earlier time, essentially the same question might have been posed by inquiring about What special contribution can political scientists make to political reform? More recently, the reform motif has become something of an anathema to the more scientifically rigorous political scientists. Yet, we keep returning to the problems of reform like moths drawn to a candle flame. Perhaps we will be able to make a special contribution as political scientists to the analysis and formulation of public policy only when we develop the capability for analyzing the issue of reform with some measure of professional competence. "My invitation to participate in this meeting was to direct attention to the tangible and practical problems of public policy associated with water resource development and not to discourse about political reform as such. Yet, contemporary studies of water resource development persistently turn to allegations of institutional failure among resource development and management agencies and conclude by either explicitly or implicitly proposing a program of reform. Most of these studies have been made by economists, those done by political scientists have a similar, albeit, variant approach to institutional failure and reform. The studies by economists are both more systematic and more consistent in their critique, and I shall use their work as the principal point of departure. "There are quite tangible and practical reasons, unrelated to the wiles of politicians, for problems of water resource development to become deeply involved in the political process. The water problem is, in fact, a multitude of problems, but most of these are problems of fluidity. Whenever water behaves as a liquid, it has the characteristics of 1) a common pool, flow resource involving; 2) a complex bundle of potential goods and bads which sustain; 3) a high level of interaction or interdependency among the various joint and alternative uses. The interrelationships among all three of these characteristics of a water resource situation simply compounds the difficulties in settling upon stable, long-term institutional arrangements for the economics development of water resources."
Symposium: Papers on Alternative Regimes for the Sea; Submarine Zones of Special Jurisdiction Under the High Seas -- Some Military Aspects
(1967) Goldie, L.F.E.
"At the outset I wish to offer a definition and make two preliminary points. Following the position I took in my earlier study 'Special Regimes and Pre-emptive Activities in International Law' I propose that the word 'regime' be used to indicate: 'A system of rules operating within a given legal framework or with respect to a stipulated group of related objects to allocate effective rights and resolve conflicting claims on the basis of common values'. To this definition I should add the observation that within the regime governing the allocation and evidencing of submarine zones of special jurisdiction I propose to discuss there are systems of priorities between types of envisaged uses (and especially military uses) of the sea."
Toward a Policy Model of World Economic Development with Special Attention to the Agricultural Sector
(1967) Fox, Karl A.
"Two major virtues of J.A.C. Brown's model are comprehensiveness and consistency. It reminds us very clearly that the world economy is a closed system. The exports of one country are imports of other countries. Inconsistencies among the export plans of different countries can be clearly exposed and quantified only within a complete model which includes all countries (or, as in Brown's model, all multicountry regions.)"
Deep-Sea Mining: Comments from the Floor
(1968) Goldie, L.F.E.
"This Association has, since its foundation, participated honorably and effectively in the 'progressive development of international law and its codification'. Thus, long before the United Nations General Assembly was given this function, the International Law Association was called into being as a scientific group above the contest of sectional interests and as an entity whose deliberations would clarify problems both de lege lata (questions of legal analysis and codification) and de lege ferenda (questions of law reform and justice)."
Constitutional Decision-Making: A Logic for the Organization of Collective Enterprises
(1968) Ostrom, Elinor
"In examining the outcomes of constitution making at the local level, political scientists and economists have often despaired at the resultant crazy-quilt pattern of local governmental units. One might also argue that despair should be directed at the lack of an appropriate logic to explain behavior in the on-going political process. Market behavior also appears as highly disorganized, until viewed with the help of a logic for explaining the order resulting from simultaneous, inter-related decision making in a market place. When we have developed an adequate logic or calculus to explain the behavior of local governmental systems, we may be surprised at the extent of order we can discover. We should then be better prpared to propose improvements in the on-going political process. For some time now a literature has been growing at the fringes of political science and economics which provides the beginnings of a new logic of collective action. From these theoretical foundations, one can begin to develop a relatively coherent logic of constitutional behavior at the local level. During this discussion of the logic of establishing collective enterprises, illustrations related to the management of a ground water basin will be used. The problem of ground water basin management is particularly useful in helping to understand the logic of constitution making since it is a classic example of a common-pool resource--the actions of any producer affect all other producers utilizing the basin. Secondly, the issues are relatively clear-cut and easily determined by an outside observer. Problems of ground water basin management are not in the main affected by party politics, race relations and other divisive issues of the day. In essence, one can assume all other things are held constant while examining the behavior of individuals related to this one set of events. This is as close to a laboratory situation as we can get when we are interested in the behavior of on-going systems. This type of analysis could also be applied to many others problems of metropolitan areas including housing, sanitation, recreation, and transportation."
Enforcement of Water Pollution Control Laws
(1971) Wenner, Lettie M.
"Pollution control today is a favorite topic for campaign promises by American politicians. If the present public interest in the environment and problems of overpopulation continues, it may one day replace motherhood as the single safest subject for political rhetoric. Everyone, including polluters, is against pollution."
General Fisheries Council for the Mediterranean: Report of the Twelfth Session
(1974) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
"The Twelfth Session of the General Fisheries Council for the Mediterranean (GFCM) was held from 11 to 15 March 1974 at Varna, Bulgaria, under the chairmanship of Mr. Z. Ben Mustapha, and with the attendance of the delegates from thirteen out of eighteen Member Nations, and observers from five international organizations."
Multi-Mode Measures: From Potholes to Police
(1975) Ostrom, Elinor
"On Palm Sunday one year ago, I found myself walking down an Indianapolis street, carrying a yardstick and dashing out between passing cars to measure the potholes in the street. Why would any sane person dash out onto a busy street to risk their life to measure some holes in the ground? I must confess that I asked myself that question several times that day and other days while I helped develop our 'unobtrusive' measures of road conditions. The answer to that question takes a somewhat long route but will be the focus of this presentation."
Can Development Be Administered?
(1975) Loveman, Brian
"This paper raises some issues concerning the basic assumptions of Marxist-Leninist and American liberal democratic views on the process of 'development.' In particular it asks whether the assumption that development' can be administered is tenable. In approaching this question, the paper examines (l) the conception of development held by Marxist-Leninists and certain liberal democratic theorists, including those associated with the Comparative Administration Group; (2) the means proposed to achieve 'development' in each case; and then.(3) suggests' apparent contradictions in each of these formulations. The contradictions lead to the conclusion that in some important ways 'development administration' is antagonistic to development."
Offshore Oil: Costs and Benefits
(1976) Bradley, Tom; Byrne, Brendan; Cousteau, Jacques-Yves; Haynes, H.J.; Hughes, Royston
"Offshore Oil: Costs and Benefits provides the edited transcript of a Round Table that concluded AEI's two-day conference on the impact of offshore oil, held at Los Angeles, California, in March 1975. The participants were Governor Brendan Bryne of New Jersey, representing the eastern coastal states governors, Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau for the environmentalists, Chairman of the Board H.J. Haynes of Standard Oil of California for the oil companies, and Assistant Secretary Royston Hughes, representing the Department of the Interior and the administration generally. The imperturbable moderator was Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles."
The Fragmentation of Public Policy Analysis: The Example of U.S. Regulatory Policy
(1976) Dubnick, Melvin J.
"This paper will concentrate on the change toward a public policy focus as it is manifested in the study of economic regulation. The state of analysis in the issue-area is examined and related to the fragmented condition of public policy analysis in general. Finally, consideration is given to the direction students of government regulation should take in meeting the challenge of policy analysis. What results is an agenda for research which is as much a personal statement of objectives for this writer as it is a plea for more work in this area by those interested in the policy sciences."
Competition and the Integration of Agriculture and Cattle Raising in Sahelian and Soudano-Sahelian Africa
(1977) Pelissier, Paul
"Situated between the Sahara, traditionally the domain of pastoral nomadism, and the Sudanian zone, the Sahel zone has long been a place of encounter, of competition--even confrontation--between herders and farmers. But is it not also a center for unique modes of production based on techniques specific to Africa and capable of explaining some of the most noteworthy aspects characteristic of Africa south of the Sahara?"
Public Economy Organization and Service Delivery
(1977) Ostrom, Elinor; Ostrom, Vincent
"Decision makers in the Detroit area are faced with the consideration of changing the organization of governmental units as one means of increasing both the efficiency and equity of urban services delivery. However, a key question is whether a decrease (or an increase) in governmental fragmentation will affect financial capability to deliver equitable and efficient urban services. "The Question cannot be answered without a well-developed and empirically based theory of institutional analysis and design. For years, conventional theories have been based on untested hypothesis about the relationship between the size and fragmentation of local governmental units on the one hand, the efficient and equitable delivery of urban services on the other. This has been challenged in the past twenty years by a growing number of economists and political scientists who have made considerable advances both theoretically and empirically. Their work has not yet produced a completed, accepted, and empirically validated theory of institutional analysis and design. The basic elements have, however, been worked out, and considerable empirical investigation supports hypothesis derived form this theoretical tradition. In this paper we will first provide a basic overview of this developing theory of institutional analysis. Any theory has its own language, and to understand it, one must first understand the basic terms. Thus, we shall first define and discuss some elemental concepts that are essential for understanding the approach. Then we will examine some opportunities and problems of complex structures, and lastly, examine some implication of this approach for the Southeastern Michigan area."
Ocean Mining Policy: A Dynamic Approach
(1978) Klein, Burton H.
"No Abstract Available."
Public Water, Private Land: Origins of the Acreage Limitation Controversy, 1933-1953
(1978) Koppes, Clayton R.
"In 1976 the Ninth Circuit Court Appeals in San Francisco sent a series of shock waves along clearly defined fault lines of California agriculture. The court ruled that the federal reclamation laws dating to 1902 mean what they say: Heavily subsidized irrigation water can be distributed only to 160 acres per individual landowner, and anyone holding more than a quarter section must dispose of the excess land in order to receive reclamation water. The ruling occasioned surprise and consternation in some quarters, for it seemed to presage major alterations in the land-tenure pattern of the Central Valley of California, and potentially on reclamation projects throughout the West."
Constitutional Level of Analysis: Problems and Prospects
(1979) Ostrom, Vincent
From p. 20: "The problems and prospects inherent in using the constitutional level of analysis to inform political inquiry are sufficiently great that they deserve careful consideration in laying the theoretical foundations for empirical investigations of political behavior and policy analyses. The theoretical analysis occurs at the constitutional level where inquiry is oriented to a consideration of alternative institutional arrangements. The conduct of empirical investigation occurs at the operational level within the constraints of given institutional structures. If empirical inquiry is to be informed by an appropriate theoretical analysis we need to proceed at both the constitutional and the operational levels of analysis. If we do so we may discover important links between political theory, political practice, and political science. We would then be in a position to test propositions about whether political structures do make a difference in the way that people are governed and live their lives in human societies. "Considering the nature of human artisanship we need to come to terms with conceptions of political structures as entailing more than words on paper. No one would expect a chemical formula to work by itself. Political institutions entail political artisans as well as political formulas. Then we learn how to treat artisans, and the conceptions they use, as informing conduct in relation to structures we may be in a position to determine the relationship of the structure of institutional arrangements to the consequences that flow for human societies. This requires more than the study of behavior per se. The constitutional level of analysis must accompany the operational level of analysis in the study of political phenomena not as natural phenomena, but as artifactual phenomena."
Urban Bads and the Structure of Institutional Arrangements
(1979) Sproule-Jones, Mark
"This paper will attempt to answer these broad questions. It does so by first outlining what may be called 'the theory of public bads.' Such a theory is necessary to explain the relationships between institutional arrangements and policy initiatives in the context of an urban and interdependent society. And this kind of explanatory knowledge is necessary for an evaluation of past institutional changes and future institutional possibilities. "Part II of the paper contains the theory and an illustrative case study of its empirical warrantability. Part III of the paper argues that the thrust of most changes in institutional arrangements over the last decade may have exacerbated rather than ameliorated the human condition in urban society. This argument is congruent with the theoretical section. It also presents a key institutional reform which could set the agenda for responsive and effective governance of urban society in the immediate future."
Performance Measurement in Practice: A Methodology Gone Amuck!
(1979) Ostrom, Elinor
"'Evaluation research,' 'productivity measurement,' 'Management science,' and "program budgeting are different names given to closely related techniques all of which involve measuring organizational or program performance in one way or another. Much is to be learned from these approaches in any effort to to address the conceptual issues involved in measuring the performance of public agencies such as the police. However, while the early work in these traditions stressed the iterative and learning nature of the enterprise, more recent applications have routinized the process into defined steps. Blind acceptance by evaluation researchers of these reconstituted approach hes to performance measurement can have serious consequences for the quality and usefulness of the work produced."
Productivity in the Urban Public Sector
(1979) Ostrom, Elinor
From page 1: "A critical issue in comparative urban policy research pertains to the productivity of agencies supplying urban public services. Many problems associated with the urban crisis relate to the failure of such urban public services as police, education, welfare, waste collection and disposal, and transportation. Productivity is defined here as the difference between: (1) the value of the output of urban delivery systems and (2) the value of the inputs used by such systems, while (3) controlling for the costs of production under different service conditions.1 Productivity is a more complex phenomenon than many subjects of comparative urban research since it is not an attribute of any specific actor. We cannot simply agree upon a definition and apply a measurement instrument to a single source of data as we can with attributes of citizens, street-level bureaucrats, and public officials-or other actors. (Even this process is difficult as witnessed by the extended debates over such measures as IQ.) Productivity is measured by computing the relationship among three quite complicated concepts: (1) the inputs for an urban delivery system, (2) the outputs produced by that system, and (3) the relevant service conditions."
The Institutional Framework for Sahelien Reforestation: Microcatchments, Experiments and Local Autonomy
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"This essay treats issues Sahelien and expatriate foresters, Sahelien governments and foreign aid donor organizations now concede to be crucial to implementation of successful environmental management programs in the Sahel, that much-abused band of territory along the Sahara's southern fringe. Among these issues are: (1) development of effective techniques of reforestation and woodstock management; (2) involvement and active participation of Sahelien peasants in reforestation and woodstock management; (3) identification of appropriate institutional frameworks within which such actions can occur."
Peasant Perceptions of Problems and Possibilities for Local-Level Management of Trees in Niger and Upper Volta
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"This essay compares perceptions of woodstock management possibilities held by peasants living intwo widely separated sets of Sahelien villages, one located in south-central Niger, the other in northern Upper Volta. It assesses willingness to reforest as a function of (1) wood resource availability and (2) the working, or effective, rules of tree tenure. Working rules of tree tenure are structured, broadly, by (a) the character of local politico-judicial activity and (b) the nature-and degree of forest service activities in the areas studied. The overriding concern of the essay is policy analysis: given wood resource scarcity, and thus-need to manage the woodstock for sustained yield in a fragile environment what tree tenure rules most effectively promote popular reforestation?"
The Concept of Coproduction and its Implications for Public Service Delivery
(1980) Kiser, Larry L.; Percy, Stephen L.
"Contrary to most economic theory, consumers are not always easily distinguished from producers, particularly in the consumption and production of public services. Consumers of public safety add to their consumption and add to the community's supply of public safety by installing extra locks and outdoor lighting to their homes, changing living patterns to decrease exposure to attack, training in methods of self-defense, joining with neighbors to patrol the neighborhood, and providing police with details about criminal incidents. Consumers of fire protection increase their own safety by clearing away flammable materials, installing home fire alarms, and volunteering to fight fires with local fire companies. Consumers of educational services increase their consumption by teaching themselves and their own children, monitoring their children's progress in school, and volunteering as teacher aids. Consumers of clean environments increase their consumption by hauling trash to dump sites, recycling household waste, packaging household waste and carrying it to the curbside for pickup, and participating in community clean up campaigns. Consumers can thus increase the amount and/or quality of services they consume by directly contributing to their production."
Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Institutions
(1981) Shepsle, Kenneth A.; Weingast, Barry R.
"This paper examines the properties of majority-rule institutions given fully strategic behavior by all agents. Results are provided, characterizing majority-rule outcomes, for several alternative agenda institutions. The main conclusion is that institutional arrangements, specifically mechanisms of agenda construction, impose constraints on majority outcomes. In the last decade multidimensional voting models have become subtle and complex instruments for explicating social choices by majority rule. What has been learned from them is that little will be known about an institution based on majority rule if the focus is exclusively upon the majority preference relation between alternatives."
Citizen Coproduction as a Mode of Participation: Conjectures, Modes, and Cockroaches
(1981) Wilson, Rick K.
"This paper will examine citizen activity in service delivery, sketching an additional facet to the concept of participation. The bulk of the paper will rely on developing an institutional approach to understanding coproduction as an important mode of citizen participation. The model will then be subjected to an empirical test of citizen provisioning strategies. The data, based on services supplied in apartment complexes, was collected by the author and colleagues as a field experiment to understand the nature of institutional effects on coproduction."
On the Limits of Social Ecological Explanations in Comparative Research
(1981) Berge, Erling
"The central problem of social ecological theory is to understand how a population organizes itself in adapting to a constantly changing yet restricting environment. The 'ecological complex' (Duncan 1959) of population, organization, technology and environment are the main variables used in the studies of growth and development of social systems. A social ecological population with a common culture. It is clearly a non-actor system. Only rarely will one find coincidence of the boundaries of responsibility for a state and the boundaries of a culture."
Rational Choice Explanations of Social Facts
(1981) Shepsle, Kenneth A.; Weingast, Barry R.
"On the hypothesis that 'those who can do and those who can't do philosophy of science', we shall not dwell long on esoteric matters in this essay on theories of rational choice. Rather, our mission is pedagogical; so our task is to describe and illustrate rational explanations and to argue their utility. In doing so we shall take care to describe what a scientific commitment to rational choice entails. But we also wish to take a pragmatic line; models of rationality must satisfy scientific criteria, not religious ones!"
Nigerien Herder Associations: Institutional Analysis and Design; Executive Summary
(1981) Thomson, James T.
"This report analyzes feasibility of herder associations in the Niger Range and Livestock (NRL) project's pastoral zone area. It comprises two broad sub-sections: 1) institutional analysis of rationales for and conditions governing feasibility of herder associations in the project area; and 2) alternative institutional designs for such groups, in terms both of internal organization and relationships to the Government of Niger (GON) administrative hierarchy."
Institutional Effects on Committee Behavior: Or, You Can't Stop to Smell the Roses When Playing a 5-Person Game
(1981) Wilson, Rick K.
"Combining philosophy with empirical analysis is generally a dangerous thing to undertake. Something will always be lost in the translation. Nonetheless, in most instances such an endeavor is warranted. This paper provides a brief overview of a central concern in the debate between proponents of classical democratic theory and empirical democratic thought. This concern reduces to whether the contextual elements of a polity (more specifically the institutional structure) have a significant effect on democratic practice. The empirical work in this paper attempts to show that changes in the structure of a 'democratic' decision-making arrangement can affect the outcomes for that arrangement. Further, it is possible to model such an institution and subsequently to predict certain classes of outcomes."
Institutional Analysis, Policy Analysis, and Performance Evaluation
(1982) Ostrom, Vincent
(From p. 3): "In this paper I shall focus upon some basic cognitive distinctions that scholars make when they engage in the study of political phenomena. The distinctions I want to make pertain to what I shall refer to as policy analysis, institutional analysis and operational analysis. First, I wish to show how these different modes of analysis are related to one another and show some of the difficulties that are likely to occur when studies are conducted without an awareness of the essential complementarity of these different modes of analysis. I shall turn first to policy analysis, to operational analysis and then to institutional analysis. Finally, I shall indicate how the focus upon implementation structures and upon public-service industries to study patterns of interorganizational relationships are essentially complementary to one another. The tasks confronting us, then, is to develop a conscious awareness of the importance of making proper linkages in scholarship drawing upon these different ways of conceptualizing patters of interorganizational relationships."
Modeling Bureaucratic Incentive Systems in a Local Public Economy
(1982) Ostrom, Elinor
(From page 1:) "Distinquished groups of scholars and public officials, such as the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, have argued for many years that the structure of government in most metropolitan areas is a jungle, a maze, a jigsaw puzzle, a hurdle -- or other terms that convey the sense of being chaotic (ACIR 1977). The reform repeatedly recommended for metropolitan areas is to simplify the structure. Good government is equated with simple structure. Bad government is associated with comples structure. This has been implicitly assumed. My colleagues and I at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis have argued for some time that before we recommend massive changes in the structure of local government, we should understand how structure affects performance (V. Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren, 1961; V. Ostrom and E. Ostrom, 1966; E. Ostrom, Parks, and Whitaker, 1978; E. Ostrom and Parks, 1982). "Without an understanding of how political structure affects outcomes, we cannot know whether recommended reforms will improve or detract from the performance of local governments..."
Peasants, Rules and Woodstock Management in Zinder Department, Niger
(1982) Thomson, James T.
"This paper analyzes human responses to growing Woodstock (all ligneous plants, from bushes to trees) scarcity in three villages of Inuwa Canton (district) in south-central Mirriah Arrondissement (county), Zinder Department (state), Niger. It notes, among other things, future possibilities for environmental management as defined by villager interest, legal, political and technical constraints."
Nature, Culture, and the Law in New Jersey: Shellfisheries
(1982) McCay, Bonnie J.
"The traditional 'law of the sea' in North America is that of common-property. Access to marine resources is open to all citizens,albeit subject to government power to license and restrain some of their activities . Most fishery biologist s and economists take the common-property, open-access feature of marine fisheries as given and address its implications for resource management--i.e., the 'tragedy of the commons.' Anthropologists have done the same. In recent years, however, we have begun to appreciate (1) the diversity of 'sea tenure' systems other than common-property in human experience, and (2) the diversity of common-property systems — ranging from common use-rights tied to local law, custom, and practice and accompanied by communal regulation to the 'freedom of the seas' of international law. It is also arguable (3) that the common-property, open-access status of marine resources is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain cases of resource depletion and fishing community poverty; and (4) that , in fisheries as in other agrarian activities, the 'real' tragedy of the commons may be the result of enclosure and appropriation--a tragedy of the commoners. The last is evident in the saga of inland salmon fisheries of the Old World. Today, in some places of the Old World poaching is the only possible expression of the old law of the commons in fisheries."
Silence is a Commons
(1982) Illich, Ivan
"Computers are doing to communication what fences did to pastures and cars did to streets."
Fishermen and Fisheries Management
(1983) Thomson, David B.
"This paper deals with the attitudes and responses of fishermen and fishing communities to fishery regulation measures. Any means used by Government to control, limit or direct fish-capture activities must necessarily affect the fisherman. His cooperation is essential to the success of the legislation. His attitude and reaction largely determine how workable any regulation will be in practice."
The Rationality of the Free Ride
(1983) Mueller, Ulrich O.; Chanowitz, Benzion; Langer, Ellen
"In this paper I will argue the following points:(1) Prescriptive and descriptive solutions to the free rider problem are insufficient, when they either demand the establishment of institutions or point to the existence of institutions which are able to prevent people from taking a free ride, but fail to explain how these institutions can actually develop during biological or cultural evolution. (2) That a certain behavior is good for the group or the society does not necessarily mean that it has a chance to evolve and to become stabilized if it is potentially harmful to the individual who displays this behavior. This is possible only under certain conditions the study of which is an important issue of modern theoretical population biology. Some of the relevant findings will be described. (3) These findings have an enormous impact on the further limes of development of theoretical as well as empirical research in the public goods/free rider field. A conceptual framework for theoretical research as well as the design of an experimental study under way will be presented."
Analyzing Institutions for the Delivery of Local Collective Goods
(1983) Ostrom, Elinor
Author's abstract: "Public choice theory has proved particularly fruitful when applied to the analysis of institutional arrangements for providing and producing public services in metropolitan areas. Scholars working within traditional disciplines of political science and public administration had reached a theoretical impasse in understanding the complexity of the existing delivery arrangements. By identifying the key attributes of collective goods and the difference between organizing for the provision and for the production of collective goods, scholars working in this interdisciplinary area brought comprehensibility to the study of complex service delivery arrangements. Further, empirical research now supports several counter-intuitive propositions derived from this approach about the effects of institutional arrangements on the effectiveness and efficiency of police agencies serving metropolitan areas."
Entitlements, Rights, and Fairness: Some Experimental Results
(1983) Hoffman, Elizabeth; Spitzer, Matthew L.
"This paper reports the results of a set of experiments designed to test our hypothesis about subjects' attitudes towards the connection between methods of allocating property entitlements and the fairness (or justice) of regarding those entitlements as rights. We generate testable hypotheses by making a theoretical connection of the following sort: if a subject holds a particular theory of fairness about entitlements and rights, then he will tend to act in certain ways."
Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions
(1983) Shepsle, Kenneth A.
"This theme paper focuses on political institutions and their effects on social choice. Institutions are argued to play a mediating role between the preferences of individuals and social choices. In addition to playing an endogenous role in molding and channeling preferences, institutions prescribe and constrain the set of choosing agents, the manner in which their preferences may be revealed, the alternatives over which preferences are expressed, the order in which such expressions occur, and generally the way in which business is conducted. The paper surveys the relationship between institutional arrangements and equilibrium outcomes in order to assess the importance of institutions for final outcomes. In so doing, we will have some perspective on the degree to which the traditional multidimensional voting model—institution-free and highly atomistic-- is an extreme case. Since institutions are not carved in granite, and are themselves the object of choices, it is important to take the next step of determining the durability of institutional arrangements or, on the other hand, the ways they adapt and evolve or atrophy. This will be the subject of the later part of this paper."
Legal Considerations and Alternatives for Organizing Water Users
(1983) Radosevich, George E.
"This paper reviews the major types of laws and local user associations regarding water resources. Brief examples of Islamic water law, the Indonesian subak system, and customary-cum-modern law in the U.S., U.K., France, and Spain are mentioned in the text."
Social Science and the New Resource Economics: Copernicus and the Fort Collins Computer
(1983) Baden, John
"Much of the analysis being conducted in natural resource economics and policy is statistical, technical, and formal. Shadow prices for nonmarketed resources, linear programming models of optimal timber harvest scheduling, and the application of optimal control theory to groundwater management all provide examples of the ingenious application of these techniques. The level of sophistication in this research is impressive, but the implications are often enigmatic and sometimes irrelevant. "The new resource economics (also referred to as the new institutional economics), with its focus on institutions and their effects on individual decision makers, is a more encouraging and quite possibly a more relevant approach to natural resource policy. This new economics takes decision-makers as the relevant units of analysis and then focuses on the information and incentives provided by the institutions within which they operate. The propositions underlying this approach are, first, that individuals act on information and incentives and, second, that institutions generate information and structure incentives. By focusing on the institutional structuring of information and incentives, it is possible to explain important aspects of pollution, the rapid depletion of resources, the extinction of animal and plant species, and inefficient resource use."
Freedom and Organization
(1983) Ostrom, Vincent
From p. 1: "I shall tentatively define freedom as the capacity to act on the basis of one's own considered judgment. I shall define organization as a requirement to act in relation to mutually understood rules that enable individuals to pursue opportunities subject to limits. Human beings confront the circumstance that organization is necessary to freedom and, at the same time, constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom. A fundamental tension must necessarily exist between freedom and organization. It is incumbent upon human beings to understand some of the conditions that are associated with the necessary tensions between freedom and organization and learn to live with them. In addressing these issues, I shall turn first to the question of why does the problem of freedom arise; second, why is organization necessary to freedom; third, why is organization a threat to freedom; fourth, can freedom and organization be reconciled; and finally, why must these tensions necessarily remain? My analysis will necessarily be a partial and limited one."
Non-linear Prices and the Optimal Allocation of Public Goods
(1983) Binger, Brian R.; Hoffman, Elizabeth
"In the last decade there has been considerable interest in decentralized procedures for both choosing the scale of and financing public goods projects. The literature has focused on two different types of decentralized allocation schemes: demand-revealing mechanisms and dynamic tatonnement planning procedures. In addition, despite the free rider problem, voluntary subscription has received some renewed attention. Kalai (1980) has proposed a voluntary contractual procedure which induces cooperative behavior."
Rates of Change in Norwegian Households 1974 - 77
(1984) Berge, Erling; Bugge, Liv Susanne
"The rates of transition between pairs of 18 types of households during the period 1974-77 are investigated for the women of the Norwegian Fertility Survey 1977. More than 80% of the women live in the 7 types of households called the main sequence of households because of its relation to a typical life course. The 7 types are single, cohabitation and married without children, and married with 1, 2, 3 or 4+ children. For these households number of children affects the rates more than age. The 11 types outside the main sequence are single parent households, cohabitation households with children and households with more than 2 adult persons. Multi-adult households recruit only from cohabitation households and seems to be a type of household on the increase. But the main thrust of the process of household formation going on between 1974 and 1977 supports the traditional family and the reproduction of the population to such a degree one has to question the impact of non-response in the data."
Politics, Policy, and Public Choice: A Critique and A Proposal
(1984) Ingram, Helen M.; Scaff, Lawrence A.
"In modern political science the study of politics has been guided by two contrasting perspectives. In one view political life has been conceived in terms of structural and organizational arrangements, groups, or classes and their relations, the 'symbolic' properties of political process, and the 'real' exercise and distribution of power or authority. From this perspective, policy is understood to be a result of the use of power and the material and non-material resources underlying that use, as well as the organizational forms that structure the movement of power. It is commony agreed that such forms 'affect how agendas are set, who participates in decisions, and what means are available for solving particular policy problems' (Alt and Chrystal 1983, pp. 8-9). The analytic focus is typically upon a system of relationships that constrain action. Thus, according to this political approach to political phenomena people's actions are understood to be oriented not simply by 'optiminizing' behavior, but by such factors as political ideology, cultural concerns, the influence of leaders, 'rational' belief in 'legitimate order,' the desire to perpetuate an institution, or just plain habit. Within American political science studies or 'who gets what, when, and how' (Lasswell), of 'the authoritative allocation of values' (Easton) within complex systems, or political process (Truman), of legitimacy (Lipset), of political culture (Almond), or more recently of 'structure' (Przeworski) are predicated on these assumptions. Among such topics are included an enormous amount of the work political scientists have done and continue to do."
Everyone's Concern; No One's Responsibility: A Review of Discourse on the Commons
(1984) McCay, Bonnie J.
"The paper presents a critical review of various concepts, connotations and theories of common property resources drawing upon the work done in a number of social science disciplines like economics, sociology, law anthropology, political science, game theory, and biology. It gives a very broad perspective on the subject."
Managing Common-Property Resources: Agricultural Land in Colonial New England
(1984) Field, Barry; Kimball, Martha
"It is an interesting historical fact that New England farmers in the early colonial period utilized most of their agricultural land in common. The impression given by many writers is that the time was very brief during which land was used in this way; privatization is implied as occurring quite rapidly."
The Spirit of Delta: A Study in Transactions
(1984) Backhaus, Jürgen
"In this paper I want to argue that a different and less costly strategy than wage cutting is indeed available. In drawing upon the economic literature on gift relationships, cases are considered in which it is rational for workers to engage in voluntary giving to their company. Correspondingly it may be rational for the company, instead of seeking wage reductions, to deliberately create a climate which makes giving rational attractive and easy."
A Model for the Analysis of Common Property Problems
(1984) Oakerson, Ronald J.
"The purpose of this paper is to present a model that can be used to analyze common property problems whatever the specific resource or facility. Such a model must be specific enough to offer guidance in the field, yet general enought to permit application to widely variable situations. The trick is to develop concepts which identify key attributes shared broadly by common property problems and which can be treated as vaiables that take on different values from one circumstance to another..."
Models for Windbreak Management: Institutional Analysis and Design
(1985) Thomson, James T.
"This paper, based on a four-month field investigation conducted by a team of social scientists during April-August 1984, provides an institutional analysis of the Majjia Valley Windbreak Project, in a first section, and then outlines three different designs for institutionalized, participatory windbreak management in the second."
The Structure of Households in Scandinavia Since 1950
(1985) Berge, Erling; Bugge, Liv Susanne
"The paper investigates the changing structure of households according to number of persons, number of children and sex and age of head-person. Definitions and their changes are discussed. Mean number of persons per household has decreased from about 3 in 1950 to about 2.5 in 1980. The proportion of one-person households has increased from about 20% to about 30%. The proportion of households with children has decreased from about one half to about one third of the households. The proportion of households headed by a woman has increased from about 20% to about 30%."
Implementing a Lindahl Equilibrium with a Modified Tatonnement Mechanism: Some Preliminary Experimental Results
(1985) Binger, Brian R.; Hoffman, Elizabeth; Williams, Arlington W.
"There has been considerable experimental work on private goods auction markets and on incentive-compatible public goods allocation mechanisms. But, with one exception, there has been no experimental work on classical tatonnement mechanisms of any kind. This is despite the fact that most theoretical work on markets assumes such a mechanism. This paper reports preliminary experimental results on implementing a tatonnement mechanism for allocating public goods. The experiments are conducted on the PLATO interactive computer system, which act s as both the auctioneer and the passive medium of information transfer and display. In addition, we discus s strategies and problems regarding the design and implementation of computerized versions of such mechanisms."
Conceptualizing the Nature and Magnitude of the Task in Institutional Analysis and Development
(1985) Ostrom, Vincent
"In an effort to frame the problem of doing institutional analysis and undertaking institutional development, I shall focus upon patterns of adaptation that contribute to human potentials for development. Increasing variety in both biological and human cultural evolution is accompanied by the development of increasing complex social orders. The critical problems are those associated with complexity. Modern 'developed' societies are those that have capabilities both for autonomous development and self-governance in systems of orders that manifest increasing complexity. After, first, exploring the human condition and its relationship to developmental potentials, I shall, second, examine the nature of institutions and their relationship to self-organizing capabilities. I shall, third, explore the task of framing modes of analysis that can be used both in institutional analysis and institutional development."
Common Resources Property: Modern Irrigation in 'Middle Tessaout'-Morocco
(1985) Herzenni, Abdellah
"The Middle Tessaout Perimeter, officially called 'Upper Tessaout', is situated in the piedmont of Atlas mountains, at 70 Kms in the East of Marrakech City. Before the construction of the Moulay Youssef dam in 1970, the plain was irrigated for centuries by traditional 'seguias' derived from the 'Oued Tessaout'."
The Origins of Institutions for Collective Action in Common-Pool Resource Situations
(1985) Ostrom, Elinor
"Considerable attention has been paid by the authors of the case studies to the problems of collective action in relation to common-pool resources. Accepted theories of collective action appear to conclude that individuals using a common-pool resource are locked into a struggle leading to the destruction of the very resource on which their livelihood depends. Several cases, however, have described situations where individuals using a common-pool resource have devised their own customs or rules to limit individual actions in ways that avoid the tragedy of the commons. Other cases illustrate what the accepted theories predict--resource systems that are over-used and whose capability to sustain a productive flow of resource units into the future is seriously endangered."
Formulating the Elements of Institutional Analysis
(1985) Ostrom, Elinor
"At the Workshop, we have attempted to bring together those aspects of work in different social sciences that help to build a more general method of analysis which can be used across different types of institutional arrangements. Drawing on the work in diverse fields, we are developing a conceptual framework that can be used to analyze the patterns of outcomes in many different settings whether they occur in markets, legislatures, teams, bureaus or firms. The purpose of the framework is to explain aggregated results occurring in many different types of interdependent social, economic, and political situations using the same set of underlying variables. The framework is a genetic type of theory. By genetic, I mean that a small number of essential building blocks are identified in the framework. These are viewed as being combined and re-combined in many different configurations. Underlying the surface diversity of human life, we are presuming that we can use a single set of analytical variables to construct empirically testable explanations of the choice of strategies and results achieved in diverse settings. Alternatively, one might characterize the framework as a grammatical theory similar in its intent to the universal grammar developed by Chomsky (1957; 1965; 1975) (see also, Campbell, 1982)."
Fisheries Thematic Mapping: A Prerequisite for Intelligent Management and Development of Fisheries
(1985) Caddy, John F.; Garcia, Serge
"The relevance of Fisheries Thematic Mapping in the general fisheries context is discussed and the current importance of resource mapping, particularly in the new Exclusived Economie Zones of developing countries, is indicated. An historical perspective on development of fisheries science in long established fishing areas supports recognition of resource mapping as an important preliminary stage to fish stock assessment, particularly for coastal resources. Some methods of assessment that stem directly from such mapping exercises are referred to, as are the dangers of uncritical use of population models which assume that 'dynamic pool' assumptions apply do geographically dispersed and contagious populations. A review of spatial considerations that affect various types of fisheries analysis is given. Some criteria, and a rough classification of various types of applications of mapping in fisheries are proposed, which include their use in fisheries prospection, in support of research vesse1 surveys, statistical and information gathering systems; the preparation of fisheries resource management plans and the leasing of marine culture purposes; coastal planning and environmental impact studies; and in support of negotiations on maritime boundaries and fisheries access agreements. The lime scales for updating fisheries maps vary between different applications. In some cases the main consideration should be ease of updating rather than great accuracy - which is constrained by the limited posilion - finding capabilities of small fishing vessels. The need for promoting routine application of new technology such as microcomputers and remote sensing in mapping, as well as suitable software for rapid compilation and updating of various thematic maps, is stressed."

Browse By

Browsing Conference Paper by Issue Date