Elinor Ostrom and the “just right” solution

Elinor Ostrom is justly valued for her contributions to understanding the nature of and solution to common pool resource problems (CPRs). Her solution is generally referred to as balancing the aim of reducing the high costs associated with political solutions with that of ameliorating the absence of incentives to create solutions at all in the market-based approach. In this short paper, I characterize her solution as a “?‘just right’ solution,” in the sense that it is a governmental solution, but one that balances these objectives. I consider endogenous variables that help maintain the creation of the institution to solve CPRs as being the “just right” solution, because it is at just the correct scope.     

In the woods: darkness at noon or Sunday in the park with Lin?

I discuss Elinor (Lin) Ostrom’s long journey into complex social systems and draw attention to her reliance on induction and the methods of experimental science. In her own words, the simple “organism” she has experimented on is a particular type of human situation—the common pool situation. I compare the philosophy of science associated with the European Enlightenment to Lin’s approach. I discuss the implication of problem difficulty and complexity for institutional policy, and conclude by comparing the tragedy of the commons to the tragedy of the anticommons, claiming that little is known empirically about the existence of the latter phenomenon.     

Lin Ostrom’s Contribution to Economics: A Personal Evaluation

Lin Ostrom’s work constitutes a great step forward in the analysis of social governance. Instead of focusing on the technical characteristics of goods she studies what types of institutions have emerged and how they affect individual motivation and behavior in public goods and commons situations. Her approach represents a careful analysis of institutions often emerging from below. Unorthodox impacts of institutions on individual motivation and behavior as well as the possible creation of new institutions must be taken into account. The constitution must ensure that the involved individuals can establish adequate institutions regardless of possible opposition by politicians and bureaucrats.     

Is the only form of ‘reasonable regulation’ self regulation?: Lessons from Lin Ostrom on regulating the commons and cultivating citizens

Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, has made significant contributions throughout her career to the disciplines of political economy and public choice. This article focuses on her contributions to our understanding of how rules of self-governance can produce cooperation out of situations of conflict over resource use. Through the use of a multiple-methods approach to political economy, Ostrom has demonstrated in a variety of historical circumstances and within a diversity of institutional environments how individuals can craft rules so that they can live better together in their communities and realize the gains from social cooperation under the division of labor.     

The Three As of Government Formation: Appointment,Allocation, and Assignment

How does the Prime Minister organize her government so that she can implement her policy agenda? In our model, a Prime Minister appoints individuals to her cabinet, allocates their portfolios, and assigns their policy tasks—that is, she decides the relevant jurisdiction of departments and the type of proposals a minister can make. Upon appointment, ministers obtain expertise on policies specific to their jurisdiction and strategically communicate this information to the Prime Minister before a policy is implemented. Assignment allows the Prime Minister to implement her agenda even when she is constrained to appoint ministers whose policy preferences are far from her own. A Prime Minister weakly prefers a diverse cabinet. In equilibrium, the Prime Minister is indifferent between delegating policy or implementing policy herself.     

Resilience in Public Administration: The Work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom from a Public Administration Perspective

This essay examines the remarkable careers of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, exploring polycentricity and human management of common property resources from the “no‐name fields” of public administration in the late 1950s, through the metropolitan public service industries and public choice approach to democratic administration in the 1960s and 1970s and the institutional analysis of common pool resource management of the 1980s and 1990s. It continues with the diagnosis of the self‐governing capabilities of socio‐ecological systems in the 2000s. Many continuities underlie focal shifts in attention. Their work will be related to developments in the public administration field along with illustrations of their pioneer example for public administration on research as a collaborative enterprise. The 2009 Nobel Laureate in economics, Elinor Ostrom has been working from an academic background and intellectual tradition that, particularly through her long‐term collaboration with Vincent Ostrom, is strongly rooted in the classical and prevailing institutional concerns that may be seen as core to public administration as an academic field of education and research.

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Thatcherism and the Conservative Party

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Party Types,Organisation and Functions

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Governance: The Collision of Politics and Cooperation

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The liberal character of ethological governance

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Civic Duty and Voter Turnout

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Pauline Hanson and the Rise and Fall of the Radical Right in Australia

Abstract

In this paper Deutchman examines the rise and fall of the radical right in the late 1990s in Australia. In particular, she focuses on the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. In 1996 an obscure backbencher named Pauline Hanson was elected to the federal parliament. From the moment she made her first speech in September of that year she was rarely off the nation's front pages. By April 1997 she started her own political party, One Nation. By July 1998 her party was able to win an astonishing 23 per cent of the vote in the Queensland state election. And by October 1998 she lost her own seat in Parliament and saw her party's fortunes decline. Deutchman examines various theories which have attempted to explain the rise of radical-right parties in Europe and the United States in order to understand the Australian case. Notably, she argues that the convergence of the two major parties, the Coalition and the Australian Labor Party, provides the setting in which the emergence of a radical-right party becomes more likely. Such a party often emerges when the two major parties are centre-right ones, as is the case in Australia. In most countries research has shown that it is difficult for a radical-right party to do well nationally. Indeed, this has been true in Australia. Despite the fact that One Nation has lost much of its electoral support, Deutchman argues that it is premature to write off the radical right in Australia.     

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Self-determination,group identity and the common will

ABSTRACT

Anna Stilz defends a political autonomy account of self-determination that, she argues, best explains our intuitions about why colonization, annexation and foreign occupation are wrong. These are wrong, on Stilz’s view, because they unilaterally coerce individuals living under those systems of government. I argue that Stilz does not show that her account of self-determination explains our intuitions about autonomy in these kinds of cases, because she does not have a separate argument for the value of belonging to particular political groups.     

"DOWN THERE ON A VISIT" SOUTHERN AFRICA TWENTYFIVE YEARS ON

Leonie Lichtenstein was born and educated in South Africa. She taught at schools and at the University of Witwatersrand and was for a period a full-time organiser for the Liberal Party in South Africa. She lived in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) from 1957–1962, where she and her husband became involved in the struggle against white minority rule. She moved with her family to England in 1962 where she was a lecturer in English at Goldsmith's College, University of London, and also active in community relations and as a governor of schools and higher education colleges.
In 1988 she returned to South Africa to give the keynote address to the Association of University English Teachers of South Africa on Literature and Politics. The present article stems from that visit. Soon after completing it, on 10 May 1989, she died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 58. She had completed a novel shortly before her death.     

Long‐Haired women,short‐haired spies: Gender,espionage, and America's war in Vietnam

Women who fought the Americans and the South Vietnamese in the Vietnam War performed many tasks. Some were the usual women's work: nursing, providing food, shelter, repairing trails, and preparing ambushes. But, they also were useful as combatants and spies. Less obvious than men, they exchanged information on troop movements while at market. They were couriers, demonstrators and recruiters. They fought and also performed intelligence through ingenious strategems. One old woman cut off her hair, was half naked, and convinced the Southern troops that she was harmless; then she entered a base and gathered information that aided the NLF forces to defeat the enemy. The communist women were indeed a key to victory.     

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ABSTRACT

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