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Working Together : Collective Action, The Commons, and Multiple Methods in Practice / A. Poteete, M.A. Janssen, E. Ostrom.
Abstract
Advances in the social sciences have emerged through a variety of research methods: field-based research, laboratory and field experiments, and agent-based models. However, which research method and approach is best suited to a particular inquiry is frequently debated and discussed. Working Together examines how different methods have promoted various theoretical developments related to collective action and the commons, and demonstrates the importance of cross-fertilization involving multiple-method research across traditional boundaries. The authors look at why cross-fertilization is difficult to achieve and they show ways for overcoming these challenges through collaboration.
The authors provide numerous examples of collaborative, multiple-method research related to collective action and the commons. They examine the pros and cons of case studies, meta-analyses, large-N field research, experiments and modeling, and empirically grounded agent-based models, and they consider how these methods contribute to research on collective action for the management of natural resources. Using their findings, the authors outline a revised theory of collective action that includes three elements: individual decision making, microsituational conditions, and features of the broader social-ecological context.
Acknowledging the academic incentives that influence and constrain how research is conducted, Working Together reworks the theory of collective action and offers practical solutions for researchers and students across a spectrum of disciplines
NOTE: This is a BOOK published with Princeton UP, not an article as suggested by ResearchGate.
... Additionally, IAD scholars embrace the use of models to test theoretical expectations under more constrained conditions, which can further illuminate the contexts under which particular theories hold (Ostrom, 2011). Empirically, a wide variety of research methods -that is, comparative field research, lab experiments, field experiments, game theory and agent-based modelling -have been employed to test and build the empirical foundation for IAD research (Poteete et al, 2010). ...
... The standards by which IAD analysts explicitly assess the outcomes of institutional design, which may include effectiveness, efficiency, robustness, adaptability, equity, coherence questions about why people create institutions to manage common-pool resources and what makes the institutions enduring or robust. For example, empirical research on common-pool resources, both in the field and in the laboratory, has explored and tested ideas about how individual communication and information influences how people would work together to create institutions to manage resources -or engage in collective action (Ostrom, 2005;Poteete et al, 2010;Wright et al, 2016). This research has highlighted empirically the importance of face-to-face communication and dialogue needed for building robust institutions for managing common-pool resources (Ostrom et al, 1994;Ostrom, 1999;2005;Andersson, 2004). ...
... The discussion on the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons" has a path that runs in parallel to the debate about the nature and the measure of SC. From the famous work of Garret Hardin [18] to the innovative contribution of Ostrom [19][20][21][22] and her research team [23,24], the debate on this issue was mainly focused on the idea that water, marine biomass, forests, wild animals, etc., existing in nature, had to be considered a stock of economic "resources", no differently from iron, territory or fossil deposits from which humanity has drawn throughout its history. In the traditional economic theory, all these resources are resumed in the category "Land", whose use/value is regulated by the exercise of the private rights and, therefore, by the market. ...
... In her empirical approach, no less important is the search for counterfactuals: first, the study of the reasons for the possible failures and, therefore, the dissolution of the SC produced and used previously. Moreover, the research was supported by the verification in the behavioral economics laboratories and by the meta-analysis of the collected material [24]. For instance, anticipating the empirical example that follows, the disciplinary of Parmigiano Reggiano is a Commons-and an SC asset-of the system and constitutes a prerequisite, a tool, and an outcome of the functioning of the process. ...
The paper discusses the relationship between Commons, Social Capital, and sustainability in terms of resources used, tools available, and goals to be achieved. The conceptual framework differs from the traditional one, which considers Commons and Social Capital as different resources. The paper considers Commons and Social Capital as homogeneous assets defined by the rights related to the access, use, and reproduction of collective resources, material or immaterial, which are essential to reduce the difference between private and social costs in the economic processes. This approach derives from a definition of sustainability as a private and social responsibility in reproducing all the resources used in the life processes, minimizing the waste caused by their exhaustion and loss of fertility. The paper refers to the model of Commons by the school of Elinor Ostrom to explain the nature and role of Social Capital and to observe it in different units of analysis, with particular attention to the forms of cooperative enterprise. The last part of the work outlines field research on the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain as a natural laboratory to test the theoretical hypotheses.
... Individual scientists need to find an environment fostering collaboration across a wide range of disciplines and working cultures, who need to find new and transdisciplinary ways of solving research challenges (Brown et al., 2015). Transdisciplinary research needs disciplinary specialists and generalists who function as boundary actors between these different disciplines (Poteete et al., 2011). Hiring and maintaining the right set of people will determine success or failure of these infrastructures. ...
Mission-oriented governance of research focuses on inspirational, yet attainable goals and targets the sustainable development goals through innovation pathways. We disentangle its implications for plant breeding research and thus impacting the sustainability transformation of agricultural systems, as it requires improved crop varieties and management practices. Speedy success in plant breeding is vital to lower the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increase crop resilience to climate stresses and reduce postharvest losses. A key question is how this success may come about? So far plant breeding research has ignored wider social systems feedbacks, but governance also failed to deliver a set of systemic breeding goals providing directionality and organization to research policy of the same. To address these challenges, we propose a heuristic illustrating the core elements needed for governing plant breeding research: Genetics, Environment, Management and Social system (GxExMxS) are the core elements for defining directions for future breeding. We illustrate this based on historic cases in context of current developments in plant phenotyping technologies and derive implications for governing research infrastructures and breeding programs. As part of mission-oriented governance we deem long-term investments into human resources and experimental set-ups for agricultural systems necessary to ensure a symbiotic relationship for private and public breeding actors and recommend fostering collaboration between social and natural sciences for working towards transdisciplinary collaboration.
... Both syntheses of diverse case studies and large-scale comparative research projects are key for enabling empirically robust theory building, but current SESF literature struggles to do both (Partelow 2018). Additionally, although we identified 21 large-N comparative studies, most units of analysis were at the individual or local level (rather than, e.g., comparisons of multiple SES cases) and sampled within a limited spatial context (e.g., within one district), likely reducing the external validity beyond that context (Poteete et al. 2010). Only two reviewed studies applied large-N analyses to regional units of analysis, which has been identified as a critical and under-represented focal level of SES analysis (Rounsevell et al. 2012, Glaser andGlaeser 2014), suggesting that researchers are facing a challenge in creating broadly comparative SES research at larger spatial levels. ...
We conducted a systematic review of the literature applying Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework (SESF), with a focus on studies using quantitative methodologies. We synthesized the step-by-step methodological decisions made across 51 studies into a methodological guide and decision tree for future applications of the framework. A synthesis of trends within each methodological step is provided in detail. Our descriptive summary is followed by a critical discussion of how this heterogeneity can lead to ambiguity in the interpretation of findings and hinder synthesis work. These critical reflections are supported by a survey of 22 scholars, each having been a co-author on at least one of the articles reviewed in this study, on the methodological challenges for applying the framework going forward.
... However, collective action is more challenging when more communities and more people can access a common-pool resource. Major breakthroughs in institutional economics (7,8) and some areas of anthropology (e.g., 9) led conservation and development partners to valorize the community as an isolated locus of action (10), according to the idea that decentralizing to the community level would solve many problems. As the challenges of the Anthropocene have escalated, conservation scientists (concerned with biodiversity) and development agencies (tackling broader issues of sustainability) have thus increasingly fixed their gaze on community action (11). ...
The management of large common-pool resources, like fisheries and forests, is more difficult when more people and more communities can access them—a particular problem given increased population sizes and higher mobility in the Anthropocene. Social relationships spanning communities, such as kin relationships, business or trade relationships, and friendships, can make management even more challenging by facilitating overharvesting, transmitting norms for overharvesting, and encouraging corruption. However, these long-distance relationships can also bolster management by transmitting norms for sustainability, promoting interdependence, and laying the groundwork for nested management systems. Here, we review the positive and negative impacts of long-distance relationships on natural resource management, providing illustrative examples from our field research on forest and fisheries management in Tanzania. Drawing on the evolutionary literature, the development literature, and our field data, we offer suggestions for how development partners may leverage, or even deliberately foster long-distance relationships to promote successful natural resource management.
... Although it is broadly accepted that this co-determines public decisionmaking in different geographies (Kickert, 2003), the nature of the relations between cultures and governance has largely been neglected. 3) Community heterogeneity -polycentricity offers an opportunity to deal with heterogeneous actors and actor groups, in terms of their capabilities, interests, beliefs, values, norms and mental models (Poteete et al., 2010;van Riper et al., 2018). According to Aligica (2014), homogeneity of human agents is assumed or expected by our current theories and models and, in order not to miss out on society's pluralism and cultural diversity, the diverse perspectives and heterogeneous communities of actors are critically important for polycentricity. ...
The Amazon is rapidly approaching its tipping point, which could turn a once enchanted tropical rainforest into a dry, carbon-emitting savannah. This will have catastrophic impacts well beyond the South-American continent and its inhabitants. The region is facing a nowadays familiar challenge of combating climate change and promoting social justice. International climate governance is proving ineffective , as it fails to incorporate the long term wellbeing of local communities. Demands for justice have led to calls for more polycentric climate governance. This approach aims to provide a culture-specific and place-based approach to dealing with the possible consequences of climate change for social justice and sustainable livelihoods. This article examines the scope for introducing Intercultural Polycentric Climate Governance (IPCG) to the Amazon. We select two examples of subnational climate governance and indigenous peoples' participation in the Amazon as our case studies: the State of Acre in Brazil and the regional department of Ucayali in Peru. Both are seen as pioneers of intercultural climate governance in their national contexts, and both have established indigenous working groups geared to promote the provision of intercultural fairness within their regional governance mechanisms. We conducted a qualitative content analysis, both of our interviews and relevant policy documents. Our study highlights three challenges for successful IPCG: 1) overcoming intercultural injustices; 2) increasing meaningful participation; and 3) filling governance gaps. Our findings reveal that there is still some way to go to meet these outcomes. Bridging polycentricity and interculturality, diverse systems of knowledge and their adherents need to be better appreciated and incorporated as part of the process of reassessing the purpose of IPCG. Only then, will we see the handling of the future of the enchanting Amazon in a holistic way: so much more than mere carbon storage.
... However, it is argued the influence of subjective norms is more applicable to visible (e.g., waste dumping) than non-visible behaviour [33] such as electricity use. Based on the literature [34][35][36], this study hypothesises that co-designing interventions can engender a collective understanding of the sustainability challenge and the responsibility of everyone in addressing the challenge. Thus, people's perceptions of how others expect them to act pro-environmentally can result in electricity savings. ...
Human practices are at the centre of unsustainable electricity use at the household level,
which means behaviour change strategies can form pathways towards electricity conservation. Although behaviour change interventions are useful in promoting electricity savings at the household
level, they are rarely inclusive and informed by the users of electricity. Using a field-based experiment,
this study examines the impact of co-designed interventions on household electricity consumption
among low-income households in Makhanda, South Africa. The results show that co-designed interventions yielded significantly more electricity savings (5%) than prescriptive interventions (2%) over
the intervention period. Participant households exposed to the co-designed interventions showed
electricity savings of up to 14% post the intervention period, suggestive of positive persistent effects.
Household size and employment status had a significant negative effect on electricity consumption while age, employment status, and baseline electricity consumption yielded positive effects.
Electricity savings were positively correlated with involvement and trust, perceived behavioural
control, and the intention to act pro-environmentally. The results highlight that co-designed interventions can yield significant electricity savings, which can in turn, result in grid stability, and reduced
electricity expenditures and carbon emissions. A key contribution of this study lies in advancing
our understanding of the effects of user-driven approaches in yielding persistent electricity-saving
behaviour, which to date has not been a focus of intervention studies. In particular, the findings lend
support to notions of supporting the agency of electricity users in co-developing solutions for local
sustainability challenges
... However, it is argued the influence of subjective norms is more applicable to visible (e.g., waste dumping) than non-visible behaviour [33] such as electricity use. Based on the literature [34][35][36], this study hypothesises that co-designing interventions can engender a collective understanding of the sustainability challenge and the responsibility of everyone in addressing the challenge. Thus, people's perceptions of how others expect them to act pro-environmentally can result in electricity savings. ...
The societal benefits of addressing wasteful electricity use practices through behavioural interventions are now well-established. Surprisingly, in South Africa, where the economy is highly dependent on fossil fuel (coal) for electricity generation, this subject remains little studied and understood. The residential sector is a major electricity consumer, and high-income households, in particular, use a substantial proportion of total electricity with serious adverse impacts on grid stability and the environment, which can disproportionately affect the poor. Using a field-based experiment, this study examines the impact of behavioural interventions on household electricity savings and the determinants of success among high-income households in Johannesburg, South Africa. Over the intervention period, households exposed to a combination of electricity-saving information, frequent reminders and feedback on monthly electricity-saving performance showed mean electricity savings of about 1.5%, ranging from 2% to 4% of electricity, while households in the control group showed increased electricity consumption by approximately 11%. Out of all the demographic and personal value factors considered, age, achievement and benevolence promoted electricity savings, while household size, number of rooms, baseline electricity consumption and security inhibited savings. The findings empirically validate the impact of behavioural interventions on, and the positive influence of, personal values in promoting participation in electricity-saving actions within households.
Significant global sustainability challenges include among others, energy, climate, and sanitation. Previous Sustainability Transition research has attempted to understand transformation complexity and interdependence, primarily through single-case methodological studies or large-scale analytical frameworks such as the Multi-Level Perspective. This leaves a knowledge gap on common dynamics underlying transition processes and emergent behaviors. To fill this gap, we conducted a cross-sectoral analysis of five system dynamics sustainability transition models with the objective of finding a common system archetype. An archetype emerged from a multi-step, mixed method structural analysis of these models. The extracted archetype captures generalizable sustainable transition dynamics across a diversity of research domains and temporal scales. The structural drivers of sustainability transitions within this archetype are used to discuss future research and practice that seeks to provide insight on common transition dynamics, deeper clarity on leverage points capable of managing transitions, and a framework for subsequent transition modeling archetype analyses.
This article is the result of a transectional descriptive research with which the benefits and solutions generated by the appropriation practices developed from society were identified. As well as the problems faced by women in the forest of San Juan Evangelista Analco, Oaxaca, Mexico. An analytical framework was designed that examines elements of forest governance in socio- environmental appropriation with a gender perspective. The information was obtained from a mixed methodological process, where casual and technical talks conditioned a space of trust that resulted in a process closer to the co-search and development of a workshop designed under a participatory learning model. The results showed the role of indigenous women in the existence of other processes in the relationship between society and nature, which emerge as a community solution and not as prescriptive policies that contribute little to the development and care of forest assets, and which are central issues in discussions about the environmental crisis and its relation to collective action.
The struggle by indigenous groups to have their rights acknowledged does not only take place through the action arenas of national political and constitutional processes, but also through active work through international bodies. Thus indigenous rights will often become arguments for institutional
and constitutional changes in the modern world. The way such changes take place is nowadays more often through the incorporation of various forms of treaties and international charters into national legislation rather than direct negotiations between sovereign states and indigenous ‘tribes’, ‘clans’ or ethnic minority groups. However, when it comes to acknowledging the rights of ownership and possession of the peoples concerned over the lands which they traditionally occupy, these seem to be among the most difficult constitutional processes modern states can undertake. Thus they not only take much longer time than the granting of civil and political rights, but they also involve complex analytical exercises in order to understand the processes connected to the settling of indigenous land claims. This article analyses one such process in a nested and multi-tier system with parallel initiatives for institutional change.
Watershed development is an important component of rural development and natural resource management strategies in many countries. A watershed is a special kind of common pool resource: an area defined by hydrological linkages where optimal management requires coordinated use of natural resources by all users. Management is difficult because natural resources comprising the watershed system have multiple, conflicting uses, so any given management approach will spread benefits and costs unevenly among users. To address these challenges, watershed approaches have evolved from more technocratic to a greater focus on social organization and participation. However, the latter cannot necessarily be widely replicated. In addition, participatory approaches have worked better at a small scale, but hydrological relationships cover a larger scale and some projects have faced tradeoffs in choosing between the two. Optimal approaches for future efforts are not clear, and theories from common property research do not support the idea that complex watershed management can succeed everywhere. Solutions may include simplifying watershed projects, pursuing watershed projects where conditions are favorable, and making other investments elsewhere, including building the organizational capacity that can facilitate watershed management.
Observation and measurement of the ocean's ecosystems is demanding and costly. It makes verification of our theories difficult and forces us to engage in collective action based upon often very imperfect concepts of the dynamics of the system. Once we establish the institutions of col-lective action we adopt 'official' conceptions of system dynamics and generate expectations about how the natural system will react to our collective actions. In response individuals invest-ment in skills, knowledge, capital, technology, business plans, scientific agendas and so on. The self-interest reflected in these investments filters the amount and the quality of private information provided to the public so that it is consistent with the self-interest of agents who acquire that information. This limits and biases the private information available to managers. If the system being managed is simple (or if we think it is) and the costs of data collection minor, these impairments are not of any account (or we may think they are not); under these circumstance, a public science body should be able to gather whatever information is necessary for continuing adaptive governance. In a complex system, however, these impairments deprive the governance process of valuable information, and reduce the scope of collective action (the set of feasible rules). This creates path dependent lock-in that reduces adaptive capacity, generating, thereby, the circumstances for still another tragedy. Our way out of this dilemma rests in an understanding of the limits of our ability to predict and control natural systems. We are most able to predict a response to our actions at broad, slow moving ecological scales, e.g., a single stock of fish next year. Consequently, we gravitate towards institutional solutions that cater to that predictive ability. But these kinds of solutions impair feedback and make us vulnerable to surprises that develop over a longer period of time and at finer ecological scales. Maintaining adaptive capacity, consequently, means moving toward institutions that are less specific and longer-term, i.e., multi-scale and system based. This tends to improve feedback by reduc-ing the bias and increasing the breadth of private information provided to the public. This cannot be accomplished, however, without taking into account the constraints on the efficient flow of information within institutions/organizations. Recognizing these limita-tions is the other part of our way out. In particular, we cannot afford to base governance on a centralized organization that operates only at a broad scale; by doing so, we misalign private incentives and social objectives, incur very high enforcement costs, forfeit the ability to use a broad range of policies necessary for sustainability and, overall, create an environment in which information about the environment and the impact of our activities is very costly
Land-use system dynamics and demographic dynamics are tightly coupled. In environmental science and studies of changes in land use and land cover, an unequivocal relationship is sometimes found between both systems, especially in coarse-scale studies. To obtain a better understanding of these intermingling dynamics, we formulated an agent-based model, the MameLuke settlement model, that used a deductive approach to investigate these relationships. The model was constructed based on ethnographic histories of farm households in San Mariano, the Philippines. The model was calibrated visually. Although this calibration approach proved to be very inefficient, the model itself still outperformed a random model. The model formulation process and the model outcomes were quite extensively discussed with stakeholders, and the conceptual modeling approach and framework proved to be clear and useful tools for local-scale studies dealing with interacting human and biophysical subsystems. Copyright © 2006 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Community-based approaches to environmental management have become widely adopted over the last two decades. From their origins in grassroots frustrations with governmental inabilities to solve local environmental problems, these approaches are now sponsored frequently by governments as a way of dealing with such problems at much higher spatial levels. However, this ‘up-scaling’ of community-based approaches has run well ahead of knowledge about how they might work.
This article explores how Elinor Ostrom’s ‘nesting principle’ for robust common property governance of large-scale common-pool resources might inform future upscaling efforts. In particular, I consider how the design of nested governance systems for large-scale environmental problems might be guided by the principle of subsidiarity.
The challenges of applying this principle are illustrated by Australia’s experience in up-scaling community-based natural resource management from local groups comprising 20-30 members to regional bodies representing hundreds of thousands of people. Seven lessons are distilled for fostering community-based environmental governance as a multi-level system of nested enterprises.
Two leasehold forestry case studies reveal potential limitations in the poverty alleviation potential of Nepal's leasehold forestry program. First, even though the program is targeted toward the poorest, nonpoor households can find opportunities to enter leasehold forest user groups. Second, by not raising the incomes and living standards of all households in a group simultaneously, it is possible for leasehold forestry to simply redistribute poverty. These limitations may be problems of implementation, rather than design. If so, it is important for implementing officials to be cautious when forming leasehold forests.
Case study researchers use diverse methods to select their cases, a matter that has elicited considerable comment and no little consternation. Of all these methods, perhaps the most controversial is the crucial-case method, first proposed by Harry Eckstein several decades ago. Since Eckstein’s influential essay, the crucial-case approach has been used in a multitude of studies across several social science disciplines and has come to be recognized as a staple of the case study method. Yet the idea of any single case playing a crucial (or critical) role is not widely accepted. In this article, the method of the crucial case is explored, and a limited defense (somewhat less expansive than that envisioned by Eckstein) of that method is undertaken. A second method of case-selection, closely associated with the logic of the crucial case, is introduced: the pathway case.
The decision to stay at home when you have no umbrella and rain is probable is an appropriate problem for decision theory. The decision to speed when you are in a hurry and the police might be patrolling is a game against a rational opponent. Treating the latter like a problem ofr decision theory is what I call the Robinson Crusoe fallacy. It is quite common and leads to incorrect conclusions. If the game has no pure strategy equilibrium, changes in the payoffs to a player affect not that player's strategy but the strategy of the opponent in equilibrium. For example, modifying the size of the penalty does not affect the frequency of crime commitment at equilibrium, but rather the frequency of law enforcement. I provide examples of this fallacy in regulation, international economic sanctions, and organization th̄eory and argue that it stems from inappropriate use of the concept of probability.
Land-cover change was studied in two adjacent sub-basins of the Kair Khola watershed in the Chitwan District of Nepal using air photographs and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It was determined that between 1978 and 1992 dramatic forest conversion occurred in both sub-basins. However, the form of conversion differed significantly. In one sub-basin dense forest was most often converted to maize-based agriculture, while in the other dense forest most often became degraded forest. A village-level investigation of forest governance was undertaken to determine whether community and institutional arrangements explain the differences in land-cover change or whether they are the result of human response to physical and topographic influences alone. It was found that in both sub-basins there are similar institutional structures that are inadequate to control the overexploitation of forest resources and this common attribute, coupled with topographic differences, is responsible for the different forms of land-cover change in the area. Some policy recommendations based on these findings are presented.