Digital Library of the Commons

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In Pursuit of Comparable Concepts and Data about Collective Action
(2003) Poteete, Amy; Ostrom, Elinor
Research on collective action confronts two major obstacles. First, inconsistency in the conceptualization and operationalization of collective action, the key factors expected to affect collective action, and the outcomes of collective action hampers the accumulation of knowledge. Inconsistent terminology obscures consistent patterns. Second, the scarcity of comparable data thwarts evaluation of the relative importance of the many variables identified in the literature as likely to influence collective action. The International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program addresses both of these problems. Since its founding in 1993, the IFRI network of collaborating research centers has used a common set of methods and concepts to study forests, the people who use forest resources, and their institutions for resource management. The basic social unit of analysis in IFRI is the user group, defined as a set of individuals with the same rights and responsibilities to forest resources. This definition does not require formal organization or collective action, since these features are potential dependent variables. This strategy for data collection allows analysis of relationships between diverse forms of social heterogeneity and collective action within groups with comparable rights to resources. IFRI's relational database also captures the connections among forest systems, sets of resource users, particular forest products, formal and informal rules for resource use, and formal local and supra-local organizations. By the middle of 2001, the IFRI database included data on 141 sites with 231 forests, 233 user groups, 94 forest organizations, and 486 products in 12 countries. Drawing upon these data, IFRI researchers are contributing substantially to our understanding of collective action for institutional development, the mediating role institutions play relative to demographic and market pressures in patterns of resource use, and relationships between particular institutions and forest conditions. The paper describes IFRI's strategy for collecting comparable data based on consistent conceptualization and operationalization, summarizes the contributions of IFRI research to the study of collective action for natural resource management, and identifies continuing challenges.
Strategy and the Structure of Interdependent Decision-Making Mechanisms
(1967) Ostrom, Elinor
From p. 54: The paradigm presented ... begins to sketch in the type of analysis that one could undertake when examining the affect of decision-making structures on individual behavior. It is hoped that the paradigm will be of help in stimulating further theoretical and empirical work on the relation between the structure of decision-making mechanisms and the strategies of individuals employ when attempting to reach solutions to problems through the utilization of different structures."
The Need for Civic Education: A Collective Action Perspective
(1998) Ostrom, Elinor
"Why should we teach the theory of collective action as a critical element in courses on American government and political science more generally? My answer to this question is that the theory of collective action is a core explanatory theory related to almost every 'political problem' addressed by citizens, elected officials, political action groups, courts, legislatures, and families. At any time that individuals may gain from the costly actions of others, without themselves contributing time and effort, they face collective action dilemmas for which there are coping methods."
Trust in Private and Common Property Experiments
(2007) Cox, James C.; Ostrom, Elinor; Walker, James M.
"We report the results from a series of experiments designed to investigate behavior in two settings that are frequently posited in the policy literature as generating different outcomes: private property and common property. The experimental settings closely parallel earlier experimental studies of the investment or trust game. The primary research question relates to the effect of the initial allocation of property rights on the level of trust that subjects will extend to others with whom they are linked. We find that initial endowments as common property lead to marginally greater cooperation or trust than when the initial endowment is fully owned by the first player as private property. Subjects' decisions are also shown to be correlated with attitudes toward trust and fairness measured in post-experiment questionnaires."
On Dissemination
(1976) Ostrom, Elinor; Nevin, Gillian
From p. 3: "The Comprehensive Report for this project, Patterns of Metropolitan Policing, by Elinor Ostrom, Roger B. Parks, and Gordon P. Whitaker with chapters by Frances Bish, John McIver, Steven Mastrofski, and Elaine Sharp has been accepted for publication by two commercial publishers, Ballinger Books and Lexington Books. Indiana University Foundation is currently negotiating a final contract for this volume with the NSF legal staff. The final volume will be published early in 1977. This section contains a summary of the Comprehensive Report."
Design Principles of Robust Property-Rights Institutions: What have We Learned
(2008) Ostrom, Elinor
"The problem of overuse of open-access resources was clearly articulated by Scott Gordon (1954) and Harold Demsetz (1967). Garrett Hardin (1968) speculated about the same problem, but stressed that the resource users themselves were trapped in tragic overuse and that solutions had to be imposed on them from the outside. Gordon, Demsetz, and Hardin ignited a general concern that when property rights did not exist related to a valuable resource, the resources would be overharvested. "Sufficient empirical examples existed where the absence of property rights and the independence of actors captured the essence of problems facing users of land-based commonpool resources that the empirical applicability of the theory was not challenged until the mid-1980s. The massive deforestation in tropical countries and the collapse of many ocean fisheries confirmed the worst predictions to be derived from this theory for many. Since harvesters are viewed as being trapped in these dilemmas, repeated recommendations have been made that external authorities must impose a different set of institutions on such settings. Predictions of overharvesting are also supported in the experimental laboratory when subjects make anonymous decisions and are not allowed to communicate with one another, but not when they are able to engage in face-to-face communication."
TURFs in the Lab: Institutional Innovation in Real-Time Dynamic Spatial Commons
(2007) Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Using a real-time, spatial, renewable resource environment, we observe participants in a set of experiments formulating informal rules during communication sessions between three decision rounds. In all three rounds, the resource is open access. Without communication, the resource is persistently and rapidly depleted. With face-to-face communication, we observe informal arrangements to divide up space and slow down the harvesting rate in various ways. We observe that experienced participants, who have participated in a similar private property type of experiments, are more effective in creating rules, although they mimic the private property regime of their prior experience. Inexperienced participants need an extra round to reach the same level of resource use, but they craft a diverse set of novel rule sets."
Experimental Contributions to Collective Action Theory
(2009) Coleman, Eric A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Collective action problems are difficult problems that pervade all forms of social organization, from within the family, to the organization of production activities within a firm, and to the provision of public goods (PG) and the management of common-pool resources (CPRs) at local, regional, national, and global scales. Collective action problems occur when a group of individuals could achieve a common benefit if most contribute needed resources. Those who would benefit the most, however, are individuals who do not contribute to the provision of the joint benefit and free ride on the efforts of others. If all free ride, however, no benefits are provided."
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."
Consumers as Coproducers of Public Services: Some Economic and Institutional Considerations
(1980) Parks, Roger B.; Baker, Paula C.; Kiser, Larry L.; Oakerson, Ronald J.; Ostrom, Elinor; Ostrom, Vincent; Whitaker, Gordon P.; Wilson, Rick K.
From p. 1-2: "In recent years, attention to the productive activities of consumers has increased. This attention is most common for service production (Fuchs, 1968; and Gam, et al., 1976). Garn and his colleagues argue that when services are produced, 'the person being served (the client or consumer) is inevitably part of the production process, if there is to be any production whatsoever. Therefore, the resources, motivations, and skills brought to bear by the client or consumer are much more intimately connected with the level of achieved output than in the case of goods production. The output is always a jointly produced output (1976:14-15).' "The role of consumers in producing public services has received particular attention. Partly in response to fiscal pressures and partly due to evidence regarding the inefficacy of their own unaided efforts, some public producers are increasing consumer involvement in service production (e.g., community anticrime efforts such as Neighborhood Watch or solid waste collection agencies' replacement of backyard with curbside trash pickup). In other service areas, consumers are demanding an increased role (e.g., parents and students working with groups like PUSH FOR EXCELLENCE to improve educational services or the Wellness movement among health service consumers). Most analysts of public service delivery, however, have focused on the efforts of organized bureaus and firms, ignoring consumer inputs or assigning them only an insignificant, supplementary role. This focus by analysts is generally shared by public administrators and other actors. However, the productive role of consumers as coproducers of the services they receive has been a continuing interest for us. (See, for instance, Kiser and Percy, 1980; Ostrom and Ostrom, 1978; Percy, 1978; and Whitaker, 1980.)"

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