Elinor Ostrom's ten principles of governance of the commons

(adapted for Ward 18 parks)

Centrally-controlled governance has a fatal flaw: there’s no way for central government to obtain – and then usefully sort out – all the local details that vary from place to place. One of our teachers about local governance has been Elinor Ostrom, who taught political theory at Indiana University in Bloomington until her death in 2012. Professor Ostrom shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, for her work on “governing the commons.” In November 2010 seven of us (two from CELOS, five park staff) made the 12-hour drive in two cars to Indiana to meet with her. We brought along this list of ten principles of governance that we had adapted after reading her work, and we had a travelling seminar in the cars on the trip down. When we got there, we found that Ostrom’s institute is called the “Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.” It has that name, Ostrom told us, because she and her husband Vincent Ostrom, also a political scientist, both did a lot of woodworking during their summer breaks from the university. They built a log cabin on some land they bought on Manitoulin Island, and made most of the furniture themselves. They like the term workshops because there people have to fit wood – or governance theories – together with care. Ostrom also told us that their cabin had no electricity. They had a generator to pump their water, and they adapted the water pump to run their computers and their printer as well. Then they sat down and wrote.

Ostrom’s writings, and these stories that she told us, made us think she was our kind of analyst. Here is her list of principles, which we adapted for parks, with Dufferin Grove foremost in our minds.

1. Clearly defined boundaries Individuals or households who have rights to use common resources in parks must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the park resource. On-site park staff who use the individual park as their primary worksite are included in the definition of park users.

2. User rules match local circumstances. Rules about using a park must relate to local conditions in the individual parks, including the particular park requirements, regarding labor, material, and/or money.

3. Collective-choice arrangements. Most of the people affected by the rules must be able to participate in modifying the operational rules. This includes the on-site staff at the individual parks. Their participation should be weighted according to the amount of time they work at the particular park.

4. Monitoring. Monitors, who actively audit park conditions and appropriate behaviour, must be accountable to the park users or must be the park users.

5. Graduated sanctions. Park users (including on-site staff, see principle #3) who violate the operational rules must be likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other park users, by park staff accountable to these park users, or by both. Elinor Ostrom: In the absence of effective sanctions for people who shirk working on solutions, or who free-ride on the work of others, the rest will feel like suckers and will most likely quit trying.

6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms. Park users and park staff must have rapid access to low-cost forums to resolve conflicts among park users or between park users and park staff.

7. Recognition of the right to adapt park use to local circumstances. City management must not challenge the rights of park users to develop operating rules to fit the local circumstances, nor must management challenge the right to adapt the rules as the local circumstances change.

8. Local park institutions and related government divisions are nested enterprises. Park use, maintenance, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities must be organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.

9. Continuous access to detailed information. The best information available about all the issues relevant to the individual parks must be disseminated widely to increase the degree of understanding and level of cooperation among the participants.

10. Straightforward – rather than strategic – behavior. Park users and park staff must not behave opportunistically in order to try to obtain benefits greater than those obtainable through straightforward behaviour. This condition implies that individuals must reveal their evaluations honestly, must contribute to collective benefits whenever formulas exist for equitably assigning resources, and must be willing to invest time and resources in finding solutions to joint problems. (Ostrom writes that this kind of helpful behaviour is somewhat rare.)

Elinor Ostrom, 'Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. 1990, Cambridge University Press.