Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems

By Elinor Ostrom. The American Economic Review, 2010

3,741 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This excerpt describes the intellectual journey that I have taken the last half-century from when I began graduate studies in the late 1950s. The early efforts to understand the polycentric water industry in California were formative for me. In addition to working with Vincent Ostrom and Charles Tiebout as they formulated the concept of polycentric systems for governing metropolitan areas, I studied the efforts of a large group of private and public water producers facing the problem of an overdrafted groundwater basin on the coast and watching saltwater intrusion threaten the possibility of long-term use. Then, in the 1970s, I participated with colleagues in the study of polycentric police industries serving U.S. metropolitan areas to find that the dominant theory underlying massive reform proposals was incorrect. Metropolitan areas served by a combination of large and small producers could achieve economies of scale in the production of some police services and avoid diseconomies of scale in the production of others.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc6c77a7935e6d676b2ba67ebfd879e2f8583bfd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

Institutional polycentrism, entrepreneurs' social networks, and new venture growth (2013, methodology): “We employ the theory of institutional polycentrism, which suggests that institutions originate from multiple (poly) rule-setting centers such as governments, associations, and communities (Ostrom, 2010).”
The growth paradox, sustainable development, and business strategy (2021, background): “The social–ecological perspective brings together insights from multiple levels of human–nature interactions including human agency and values (Armitage et al., 2012), organizational and international governance (Ostrom, 2010), and global social–ecological systems (Steffen et al., 2015).”
Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations (2014, unknown): “It includes case studies and experimental analyses that use the game theory of common property regimes as their theoretical framework (Ostrom 1990, 2000;18 Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker 1994; Ostrom et al. 2002; Varughese and Ostrom 2001). Other work includes Acheson (1975, 1988, 2003); Wade (1988); B”
Between markets and hierarchies: The challenge of governing ecosystem services (2012, background): “services) with two particular features: potential beneficiaries cannot easily be excluded and there is a high subtractability of use; and the latter concept refers to goods with high difficulty in excluding beneficiaries but low substractability (Ostrom, 2010).”
Public/private in higher education: a synthesis of economic and political approaches (2018, background): “Samuelson’s notion of public/private goods has led to variations, including common-pool goods, rivalrous but non-excludable, such as a fishing zone; Buchanan’s (1965) ‘club goods’, excludable but non-rivalrous until congestion occurs; and Ostrom’s (2010) ‘toll goods’, whereby all but a specific popu”
Public Participation and Institutional Fit: A Social–Psychological Perspective (2013, background): “For that, we need to look more closely at human cognition and behavior.”
The political economy of the COVID‐19 pandemic (2021, background): “We need to ask how diverse polycentric institutions help or hinder the innovativeness, learning, adapting, trustworthiness, levels of cooperation of participants, and the achievement of more effective, equitable, and sustainable outcomes at multiple scales” (Ostrom, 2010, p. 672, emphasis added).”
Generalizing the core design principles for the efficacy of groups (2013, background): “…importance attached to the conclusions presented by Hardin (1968) and the historical influence of neoclassical economics in policy dialogs, the work of Elinor Ostrom and her associates was considered groundbreaking and eventually earned her the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 (Ostrom, 1990, 2010).”
Measuring Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (2016, background): “The academic literature also proposes other measures (see: Stam 2007; Bos and Stam 2013; Parker et al. 2010; Daunfeldt et al. 2014), but these are not readily available for regions within the Netherlands in recent years.”