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Journal Article Reformulating the Commons(2002) Ostrom, Elinor"Most natural resource systems used by multiple individuals can be classified as common-pool resources. Common-pool resources generate finite quantities of resource units and one person's use subtracts from the quantity of resource units available to others. Most common-pool resources are sufficiently large that multiple actors can simultaneously use the resource system and efforts to exclude potential beneficiaries are costly. Examples of common-pool resources include both natural and human-made systems including: groundwater basins, irrigation systems, forests, grazing lands, mainframe computers, government and corporate treasuries, and the Internet. Examples of the resource units derived from common-pool resources include water, timber, fodder, computer-processing units, information bits, and budget allocations. "When the resource units are highly valued and many actors benefit from appropriating (harvesting) them for consumption, exchange, or as a factor in a production process, the appropriations made by one individual are likely to create negative externalities for others. Nonrenewable resources, such as oil, may be withdrawn in an uncoordinated race that reduces the quantity of the resource units that can be withdrawn and greatly increases the cost of appropriation. Renewable resources, such as fisheries, may suffer from congestion within one time period but may also be so overharvested that the stock generating a flow of resource units is destroyed. An unregulated, open-access common-pool resource generating highly valued resource units is likely to be overused and may even be destroyed if overuse destroys the stock or the facility generating the t1ow of resource units."Journal Article The Quest for Meaning in Public Choice(2004) Ostrom, Elinor; Ostrom, Vincent"The logical foundations of constitutional government are of basic importance if people are to be self-governing. All forms of political order are Faustian bargains subject to numerous risks. If constitutional choice applies to all patterns of human association, the complexity of associated relationships and the potential threats to the viability of associated relationships in the aggregate exceed the limits of human cognition. The development of analytical capabilities depends on using frameworks, theories, and models for formulating hypotheses about conditions and consequences, undertaking diagnostic assessments, and conceptualizing and designing alternative possibilities. The relationship of ideas to deeds in an experimental epistemology is necessary to achieve a warrantable art and science of association."Journal Article Be Diverse(2009) Ostrom, Elinor; Nagendra, Harini"The loss of biodiversity has alarming implications for the persistence of humankind, indeed for the survival of life on Earth. Protected areas are the cornerstone of most policy proposals to maintain biodiversity, yet their effectiveness is intensely debated. Furthermore, when the variety of biological life is so rich, interconnected, and diverse, it seems peculiarly shortsighted and inflexible to adopt one single approach to conservation."Journal Article Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Variability(2007) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Ostrom, Elinor"Some social-ecological systems (SESs) have persisted for hundreds of years, remaining in particular configurations that have withstood a variety of natural and social disturbances. Many of these long-lived SESs have adapted their institutions to the particular pattern of variability they have experienced over time as well as to the broader economic, political, and social system in which they are located. Such adaptations alter resource use patterns in time and/or space to maintain the configuration of the SESs. Even well-adapted SESs, however, can become vulnerable to new types of disturbances. Through the analysis of a series of case studies, we begin to characterize different types of adaptations to particular types of variability and explore vulnerabilities that may emerge as a result of this adaptive process. Understanding such vulnerabilities may be critical if our interest is to contribute to the future adaptations of SESs as the more rapid processes of globalization unfold."Journal Article The Emergence and Outcomes of Collective Action: An Institutional and Ecosystem Approach(2002) Futemma, Celia; de Castro, Fábio; Silva-Forsberg, Maria Clara; Ostrom, Elinor"Studies of collective action often focus on features of the participants and the managed ecosystem. The social analysis of the participants helps to uncover the factors driving participation in those local enterprises such as individual interest to participate and ability of the group to organize. An ecological analysis of the managed ecosystem helps to unveil how characteristics of a resource influence the type of appropriation system that is designed and how the local institutional arrangement influences the sustainability of common-pool resources. In this paper, we broaden the social and ecological context of the analysis of common-pool resources by investigating the features of non-participants, in addition to participants, to explore the factors that cause individuals to refrain from contributing in collective action."Journal Article Political Science and Conservation Biology: A Dialog of the Deaf(2006) Agrawal, Arun; Ostrom, Elinor"The reasons political scientists neglect conservation biology and biodiversity may lie even deeper than incentives related to publication and hiring. They may have more to do with what political scientists view as the most important issues and the appropriate scale at which to study them. Electoral systems and practices, democracy, political institutions, international regimes, public opinion, state-society relations, conflict, war, violence, race and ethnicity, policy making, strategic behavior, and policy outcomes are properly the province of their discipline according to most political scientists. Few see biodiversity as central to the concerns of political science. Furthermore, political scientists tend to value research at the nation-state level far more than that conducted on subnational units of analysis. Much of the research in conservation biology, in contrast, takes place at far finer scales than those denoted by national boundaries. Vigorous cross-disciplinary conversations may also be missing because of important differences in corresponding world views. For most political scientists, strategic behavior is central to human interactions. For most conservation biologists, one might argue, the imperative to protect the environment, specifically biodiversity, is beyond strategic calculation."Journal Article Traditions and Trends in the Study of the Commons(2007) van Laerhoven, Frank; Ostrom, Elinor"Prior to the publication of Hardin's article on the tragedy of the commons (1968), titles containing the words 'the commons,' 'common pool resources,' or 'common property' were very rare in the academic literature. However, between 1968 and 1985, when the Annapolis conference was held, this number seemed to be on the rise (Dietz et al. 2002, pp. 6-7). With an admittedly more powerful search capacity at our disposal, we will first explore in this article how the research community with an interest in 'the commons' has increased and diversified since 1985. Then we will explain the rational underlying the selection criteria we applied when editing this issue. We think it is important to take stock and look ahead, regularly. Also, we think it is essential to explore diverse methodological and theoretical approaches. Regarding the future, we think that scholars must embrace the challenge of finding ways to deal more explicitly with complexity, uncertainty, and institutional dynamics. We will subsequently provide an overview of the featured articles. We will then wrap up with a short concluding section."Journal Article Linking Forests, Trees, and People: From the Air, on the Ground, and in the Lab(2008) Ostrom, Elinor; Nagendra, Harini"Governing natural resources sustainably is a continuing struggle. Major debates occur over what types of policy interventions best protect forests, with the types of property and land tenure systems being central issues. Evaluating the impacts of different tenure regimes in a systematic manner is not an easy task. Ecological systems rarely exist isolated from human use. The challenge of good scientific observation of linked socialecological systems is made even more difficult because relevant variables operate at different scales and their impacts differ radically. We provide an overview of findings from a long-term interdisciplinary, multiscale, international research program that studies factors affecting forest cover. We describe insights obtained from a series of explorations from the air (landscape scale), on the ground (forest-patch scale), and in the lab."Journal Article Ideas, Artifacts, and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource(2003) Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor"The goal of this paper is to summarize the lessons learned from a large body of international, interdisciplinary research on common-pool resources (CPRs) in the past 25 years and consider its usefulness in the analysis of scholarly information as a resource. We will suggest ways in which the study of the governance and management of common-pool resources can be applied to the analysis of information and 'the intellectual public domain.' The complexity of the issues is enormous for many reasons: the vast number of players, multiple conflicting interests, rapid changes of technology, the general lack of understanding of digital technologies, local versus global arenas, and a chronic lack of precision about the information resource at hand. We suggest, in the tradition of Hayek, that the combination of time and place analysis with general scientific knowledge is necessary for sufficient understanding of policy and action. In addition, the careful development of an unambiguous language and agreed-upon definitions is imperative. "As one of the framing papers for the Conference on the Public Domain, we focus on the language, the methodology, and outcomes of research on common-pool resources in order to better understand how various types of property regimes affect the provision, production, distribution, appropriation, and consumption of scholarly information. Our analysis will suggest that collective action and new institutional design play as large a part in the shaping of scholarly information as do legal restrictions and market forces."Journal Article Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective(2004) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor"What makes social-ecological systems (SESs) robust? In this paper, we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps identify potential vulnerabilities of SESs to disturbances. All the links between components of this framework can fail and thereby reduce the robustness of the system. We posit that the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers is a key variable affecting the robustness of SESs that has frequently been ignored in the past. We illustrate the problems caused by a disruption in this link. We then briefly describe the design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions, because they appear to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general SESs and do include the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers."