Activity

Context and Background

Elinor Ostrom received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her research proving how the commons are vital to the world based on the rhetoric of the “tragedy of the commons”, which focused on private property and centralization as ways to protect finite resources from depletion. She turned over the “conventional wisdom” by validating by what means local resources could be effectively managed by commons without ruling by central government or privatization. Ostrom identified 8 design principles for how common-pool resources could be governed sustainably and equitably in a community. Similarly, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework summarizes the ways that institutions function and adjust over time. The framework observes institutions to be created by humans whereby individual choices made render consequences of particular choices made. This is one of a “multi-level conceptual map” that may offer to study a specific hierarchical section of interactions made in a system. The part of the framework includes action arena identification, formed through interactions between actors and actor situations.