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Working Paper The Need for Multiple Indicators in Measuring the Output of Public Agencies(1973) Ostrom, Elinor"The need for more valid and realizable means of measuring the output of government services at all levels of government is a critical problem for policy analysts. It is particularly important at the municipal level, where such outputs and their variations have the most direct impact upon citizens, and where sophisticated measurement and evaluation capabilities are least likely to be found."Journal Article Land Use and Tenure in the Tropics(1976) Adeyoju, S. Kolade"Tropical peoples are predominantly dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood. The prospects of significantly altering this economic pattern by bringing it to a level comparable with that of industrialized countries are, in the short run, not promising. It is therefore evident that overall development must include - indeed often must begin with activities that require and use land on a fairly large scale. Without the production of a surplus in agriculture and other rural enterprises, industrialization cannot occur, unless alternative sources of foreign exchange earnings are available from the export of minerals. However, the global consequences of 'mineral warfare' in recent years indicate quite clearly that over-dependence on exportation or importation of minerals is fraught with unpredictable hazards and sophisticated forms of blackmail. While it is desirable to have a diversity of resources and it is also necessary to prefer one type of economic activity to another, there is as yet no rationale for excluding agricultural development either in the developed or developing countries. The reasons for giving increasing attention to the agricultural sector, including forestry, are both explicit and compelling."Conference Paper 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."Working Paper International Food and Renewable Energy Programs in the Sahel: The Effect on Implementation of Local Institutional Structures(1977) Thomson, James T."I propose to investigate the part local governments ought to play in implementation of internationally-organized attempts to increase production of food and renewable energy resources in the drought-stricken West African Sahel. Scholars and practitioners agree that four critical public good problems must be resolved if food and energy production goals are to be achieved. They are: (1) forest conservation, (2) range management, (3) bottom land improvement and (4) associated land tenure issues. My prior research in a Hausa-speaking area of central Niger persuades me that effective management of international efforts to solve these problems hinges upon the capacity of local communities to mount and maintain various forms of collective action. Without such local institutional capability, incentives necessary to encourage individual and group efforts at the rural grass roots are lacking. Absent those incentives, international programs designed to enhance production of food and energy resources and involving the expenditure of literally billions of dollars will be critically, perhaps fatally, undermined."Working Paper Fiscal Illusion as an Explanation of Institutional Choice in a Federation(1978) West, E. G.; Winer, Stanley L."The fiscal 'illusion' hypothesis may be interpreted, following West and Winer (1978), as an assertion that utility maximizing public managers will invest resources to induce underestimation of tax-prices. They do so in order to maximize the size of government, subject to the controlling influence of the (median) voter under majority rule. Unfortunately for the voter, they will in general succeed if information about government activity is costly to acquire, and if political competition is imperfect. In this note, we use the fiscal illusion hypothesis to explain the choice of institutional arrangements in certain federations since 1945. In particular, we are interested in the growth of conditional or tied grants from federal to state or provincial governments."Working Paper Public Roads and Private Interests: An Inquiry into the Erosion of Public Goods(1973) Oakerson, Ronald J."The purpose of this essay is to set up a problem and pose a question. The problem will be characterized as the erosion of public goods, and the question will be directed at specifying (a) the conditions of institutional failure which lead to the erosion of public goods and (b) possible institutional remedies. The paper will focus empirically upon the decision making dynamics of a situation, still unresolved, surrounding the provision of public roads in the Cumberland Mountain coal region of Eastern Kentucky. The analysis will build upon a foundation initially advanced by James Buchanan, in which he attributes a number of public deficiencies to legal and political weaknesses, leading up to the erosion (i.e., inefficient utilization) of public supplies, rather than to a fiscal weakness, in the sense of insufficient expenditure on public supplies. The plan of the essay is to shape this formal analysis to the Kentucky case, in order to clarify and extend the lessons of each."Conference Paper Constitutional Level of Analysis: Problems and Prospects(1979) Ostrom, VincentFrom 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."Conference Paper Conference Paper 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?"Journal Article Khumbu: Country of the Sherpas(1967) Willan, R.G.M."For many years the highest mountain in the world remained unconquered. During the 1920s and 1930s numerous expeditions attempted to climb the huge peak called Mount Everest by English geographers but without success; at last in 1953 the news was flashed to the world that the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had set foot on the summit. Long before this, however, members of the various climbing expeditions in the Himalayas had become acquainted with the Sherpas who live in the high country below Everest, a people of Tibetan origin who are believed to have crossed the high passes of the Himalayas into the region now known as Khumbu about two centuries ago."