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Abstract:
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"This paper merges Elinor Ostrom’s research on small-scale collective-action problems with Bo Rothstein’s institutional quality thesis in order to overcome large-scale collective action problems and applies the resultant theory to the problem of police governance. Ostrom’s research on governance arrangements in common-pool resource scenarios showed that institutional structure and social capital made it possible for a small and relatively homogeneous set of economic principals to overcome three second-order paradoxes inherent in collective-action problems: institutional supply, credible commitment and mutual monitoring. The process of co-producing new institutions generated social capital among participants, which gave them information regarding the behavior of others, lowering the transaction costs of trusting them. One criticism of Ostrom has been that her findings are not generalizable to large modern society due small group size and relative homogeneity of participants. At the scale of a CPR it may be possible for appropriators to meet face-to-face and generate social capital but is impractical at larger scales. Rothstein’s position is that the perceived fairness (impartial), trustworthiness and predictability of core societal institutions reduces the transaction costs of trusting unknown others. If institutions are impartial, no individual or group has an advantage over any other (supply), which means that as long as institutional rules are enforced against defectors (monitoring) and that commitments to following those rules are credible. The coupling of Ostrom and Rothstein can be conceptually applied to the problem of police legitimacy in democratic societies to solve the second-order dilemmas they face in co-producing public safety with civil society."
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