〈가〉 In her book The Governing of the Commons, Elinor Ostrom, an economist who served on the faculties of both Indiana University and Arizona State University, wrote the first comprehensive economic and anthropological analysis on the history of the commons, covering a thousand-year span.
Her work dazzled the intellectual community and even the economic academy.
Ostrom’s insightful analysis of why commons governance had succeeded and failed in the past, and her pragmatic prescriptions for ensuring the success of future Commons management, won her the coveted Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 ― making her the first woman ever to receive the honer.
〈나〉 Ostrom, although every bit the economist, was not shy about taking the role of an anthropologist.
She studied commons management schemes from the Swiss Alps to Japanese villages to discover the underlying principles that made them effective governing models.
At the very onset of her work, she took care to explain that many of the commons institutions she catalogued had, in her words, “survived droughts, floods, wars, pestilence, and major economic and political changes” over long sweeps of history, making it crystal clear that the commons has proven itself to be a formidable governing institution and worthy of reconsideration in light of the environmental, economic, and social challenges and opportunities facing humanity in an increasingly connected global world.
〈다〉 Her research contradicted Hardin’s assertion that “all commons were destined to ruin because of free riding and cast doubt on the long-held shibboleth among economists ― dating back to Adam Smith ― that each individual seeks only his or her own immediate self-interest in the market.
What Ostrom found instead is that in managing common-pool resources ― pastures for grazing animals, fisheries, irrigation systems, forests, and the like ― individuals, more often than not, put the community’s interest before self-interest and the long-term preservation of the common resource above each person’s immediate circumstances, even when their plight was dire.
〈라〉 In each instance, the glue that kept the commons viable was the agreed-upon self-management protocols entered into voluntarily by the democratic participation of all the members.
It was the continuous collaboration and feedback that created bonds of social trust, generation after generation.
The social bonds kept the commons from ossifying and falling apart.
In the worst of times, the “social capital” proved to be the central asset that allowed the commons to soldier on.