Download Self-Organization Attributes of the resources

SELF-ORGANIZATION IN COLLECTIVE
ACTION:
ELINOR OSTROM’S CONTRIBUTIONS
AND COMPLEXITY THEORY
Göktuğ Morçöl
Presentation at the the Challenges of Making Public
Administration and Complexity Theory Work Conference
(COMPACT Work II), Los Angeles, CA, June 2013
Why this paper?
• To recognize Ostrom’s contributions to our understanding of
self-organization.
• To highlight the contributions by complexity theorists.
• More important: To define complexity theory itself
– Is complexity theory a distinct theory?
– Does it matter?
Elinor Ostrom (1933 –2012)
• Was Professor of Political Economy
at Indiana and Arizona State Universities
• Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics
in 2009
• for her analysis of “economic governance,
especially the commons"
• Self-organization (self-governance): a key concept in
her works
• Inspired by studies on complex systems
(Her
Nobel Prize lecture: ttp://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1223)
Ostrom versus Complexity Theory
OSTROM
COMPLEXITY THEORY
• Self-organization happens
in structured environments.
• Self-organizational ability
depends on external
boundary conditions
• Methodological
individualism
• Static conceptualization
• Methodological holism
• Recognition of system
dynamics
Self-Organization: A Big & Old Idea
The Idea:
– Events do not require external drivers, or hierarchically
superior forces, to happen.
– They can happen for internal reasons, driven by the
internal dynamics of systems.
– Self-causation, as opposed to external causation
History:
• Aristotelian teleology: “purposive finality”
• Immanuel Kant: “inner teleology” of organisms
• General systems theory, cybernetics
Self-Organization: Complexity Theory
Contributions
• Self-organization is the norm, not exception, in nature.
• It is closely related to the perpetual dynamism in nature.
• Identified some of the mechanisms of self-organization in
nature:
• Autocatalysis (Prigogine, Kauffman)
• Mutual cuing (Strogatz)
• Tagging (Holland)
• Mechanisms of the aggregation of political actors
(Axelrod)
Ostrom’s IAD Framework: Theoretical Bases
Two bases:
Rational choice theory
Polycentricism
• Rational choice:
– Brings down the conceptual barrier between
public and private interests/choices and
– Opens up a conceptual space to understand selforganization in collective action processes.
Ostrom’s IAD Framework: Theoretical Bases
• Liberal-democratic theory of government:
– Separates public an private realms, interests, and choices
• Public officials implement public policies to promote
public interest.
• Private individuals pursue their own interests.
Public choice:
• Public officials pursue their self-interests too.
Ostrom’s IAD Framework: Theoretical Bases
An alternative conceptualization of “public interest”:
• The “aggregation problem” (micro-macro problem)
• How do individual actions turn into collective
actions? (Simon & associates, 1992)
Rational choice’s answer to the aggregation problem:
• An idealized system of markets.
• Actors with fixed interests and preferences
• An additive view: Public interest as entirety of
individual preferences (Cochran & Malone, 1995)
Ostrom’s IAD Framework: Theoretical Bases
Rational choice:
• Methodological individualism
1. The individual is only legitimate unit of analysis.
2. Individual characteristics are fixed.
Ostrom:
• Not completely comfortable with methodological
individualism
– She recognizes the contexts of individual behaviors.
• But keeps it in her conceptualizations and analyses.
– Context is separate in her conceptualizations.
Ostrom’s IAD Framework: Theoretical Bases
Ostrom’s view of context:
• The attributes of a community (culture) and institutional
structures provide the preconditions of self-organization by
individual actors.
• These institutions are external to individual decision makers.
• They function as external inducements for action.
They do not shape individual preferences or values
(Ostrom & Parks, 1999).
Ostrom’s Conceptualization of SelfOrganization
Ostrom’s three objections to “contemporary policy
recommendations”:
1. It is not a simple analytical task of single central actors
to design rules for governing resources.
2. The management of resources does not have to be
centralized.
3. People are capable of designing their own rules and
governing themselves.
Ostrom’s Primary Area of Study:
Common-Pool Resources
Common-Pool Resources (CPRs):
“natural or man-made resource system[s] that [are]
sufficiently large as to make costly (but not impossible) to
exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits
from [their] use” (Ostrom, 1990, p. 30).
Examples of CPRs:
Fisheries, groundwater basins, grazing areas, irrigation
canals, bridges, parking garages, lakes, and oceans
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
Two sets of conditions of self-organization in CPR situations:
1. Conditions for initiating self-organizational processes:
“Attributes of resources and appropriators conducive to
and increased likelihood that self-governing
associations will form” (Ostrom, 2005, pp. 244-245)
2. Conditions for maintaining self-organizational processes:
The “design principles for long-enduring CPR
institutions” (Ostrom, 1990, p. 90)
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
Conditions for initiating self-organizational processes:
“Attributes of the resources”
“Attributes of the appropriators”
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
Attributes of the resources:
• There must be a reasonable chance that it is feasible that the resources available
to appropriators can be improved (R1).
• Reliable and valid indicators of the conditions of resources should be available to
appropriators at a relatively low cost (R2).
• The flow of resources for appropriators’ use should be relatively predictable
(R3).
• The resource system should be sufficiently small, given the capabilities
of the transportation and communication system, so that appropriators
can develop accurate knowledge of the boundaries of the system (R4).
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
Attributes of the appropriators:
•
The CPR system should be important (salient) enough for appropriators’ livelihood or their achievement
of important social or religious values so that they will be motivated to self-organize (A1).
•
Appropriators should have sufficiently common understanding of the CPR system (as summarized in the
items R1-R4 above) and how their actions affect the CPR system (A2).
•
if the rate of diminishment for the benefits an appropriator obtains from participating in a selfgoverning system is low, then he/she will be more motivated to participate (A3).
•
Appropriators should trust each other for keeping promises and reciprocating their actions (A4).
• Appropriators should have enough autonomy to carry out their actions; external authorities
should not be in a position to “countermand” their actions (A5).
• Appropriators should also have developed sufficient organizational and leadership skills
from their earlier experiences (A6).
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
Design principles for “long-enduring CPR institutions”:
1.
The boundaries of a CPR system should be defined clearly, as stated in
rule R4 above.
2.
Once a self-governing resources system is established, the compliance
for its rules should be enforced and monitored.
3.
A government should recognize the rights of the participants in a local
self-governing system; local communities should be allowed to craft
their own rules.
Common-Pool Resources: Self-Organization
The rationale for the third design principle:
(“A government should recognize the rights of the participants in a
local self-governing system; local communities should be allowed to
craft their own rules.”)
• Governments are involved in “multiple layers of nested enterprises”
(“polycentric systems”).
• These nested (polycentric) systems are complex adaptive systems.
• Complex systems require complex forms of knowledge, which
cannot be acquired by central actors.
Therefore, local self-governing systems are necessary.
A Critique of Ostrom from Complexity Theory
• Both Ostrom and CT acknowledge that self-organization is natural,
normal. (External guidance is not always necessary.)
• Ostrom identified the conditions of self-organization in CPR systems.
– Self-organization is not “either – or.”
– Nor is it a panacea.
– There are degrees of self-organization.
• Her conditions are static, because she adopts methodological
individualism and separates individuals from institutions.
Examples:
• Individuals use cost-benefit analyses, with discount rates.
• She defines “trust” in terms of the “expected costs.”
A Critique of Ostrom from Complexity Theory
CT proposes a dynamic and holistic understanding of selforganization.
CT researchers study questions like:
• Is intelligence a precondition for self-organization (cognitive
and reactive agents in agent-based simulations)?
• How are the boundaries of self-organizing complex
systems and the “self” defined (e.g., Rhodes, Murphy,
Muir, & Murray, 2011).
A Critique of Ostrom from Complexity Theory
CT proposes a dynamic and holistic understanding of selforganization.
CT researchers observe:
• Self-organization my create order or disorder (Prigogine).
• A self-organizing system transforms itself in an interaction with
its environment (Cilliers, 1998).
• In social systems self is defined jointly by their participants and
observers, through social construction processes (Gerrits, Marks,
& van Buuren, 2009).
What Can Complexity Theorist Learn from
Ostrom?
If we want to develop a complexity theory of governance systems:
• We can take Ostrom’s IAD framework as an example of:
– Meticulous theory building and
– Empirical verification.
(Watch her story at her Nobel Prize Lecture:
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1223.)
• The generic CT concepts of self-organization should be refined for
specific kinds of systems, like governance systems.
• Her conditions for self-organization in CPR systems are
static descriptions, but they can be starting points when
developing a dynamic theory of governance systems.
THANK YOU
ELINOR OSTROM
FOR YOUR LIFE’S WORK!