Common pool resources and collective self governance

ELINOR OSTROMAt the suggestion of my supervisor I have had a look at the work of Elinor Ostrom and can see it may helpful in establishing a code of conduct and a system of operating ‘Art Mine’.  She was a Nobel Prize winning Political economist who spent most of her academic life challenging the conventional wisdom that humans were trapped amid diminishing supplies and over exploitation of resources was inevitable.Elinor Ostrom believed that the world contained a large body of common sense and that if people were left to themselves they would sort out rational ways of surviving and getting along. Her characteristically optimistic outlook was supported by years of fieldwork backing up her postion that the overexploitation of commonly owned resources could be averted by the collective action of local users.She saw that there was a great fund of sense and wisdom in the world and that over time, humans tended to draw up sensible rules for the use of common-pool resources.  Best of all, these rules were not imposed from above. Ostrom put no faith in governments, or large conservation schemes.  She demonstrated that caring for the commons had to be organised from the ground up and shaped to cultural norms. It had to be discussed face-to-face, and based on trust; collaboration was the key. Neighbours thrived if they worked together and the best-laid communal schemes would fall apart once people began to act only as individuals, or formed elites.Ostrom suggested 8 design principles for stable and sustainable management of common pool resources within a community.1. Define clear group boundaries.2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behaviour.6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.Not all of these principals apply to an online situation but you can see, interestingly, that many of them (1, 5-7) are incorporated in some form by online trading platforms such as Ebay.