In this chapter, we ask whether the design principles that have been proposed as ways of solving small- and medium-sized dilemmas related to use of resources are applicable at a larger scale. Obviously, these principles do not scale up automatically. On the other hand, more hope exists regarding the feasibility of scaling up than is sometimes expressed in the literature (Ostrom et al., 1999).1 We analyze the problem of scaling up solutions to social dilemma problems. We focus primarily on common pool resources where everyone’s use potentially subtracts from the benefits available to others. Without some regularized boundary rules and use rules, as well as means of monitoring, sanctioning, and resolving disputes, there are major challenges in keeping individuals from adversely affecting these resources. Before addressing the design principles, let us first address the problem of matching institutions to the type of goods involved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Acheson, J. (2003). Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Anderies, J. M., Janssen, M., Ostrom, E. (2004). A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective. Ecology and Society, 9(1), 18.
Andresen, S. (2002). The International Whaling Commission (IWC): More failure than success? In: E. L. Miles, A. Underhal, S. Andresen, J. Wettestad, J. Birger Skjær Seth & E. M. Carlin (eds.), Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence (pp. 379–403). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Aristotle (1942). Politics. Trans. B. Jowett. New York: Modern Library.
Ashby, W. R. (1960). Design for a Brain: The Origin of Adaptive Behavior (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley.
Bickers, K., Williams, J. T. (2001). Public Policy Analysis: A Political Economy Approach. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Blomquist, W. (1992). Dividing the Waters: Governing Groundwater in Southern California. San Francisco: ICS Press.
Buck, S. J. (1998). The Global Commons: An Introduction. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Burns, W. C. B., Gillespie, A. (eds.) (2003). The Future of Cetaceans in a Changing World. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers.
Chayes, A., Chayes, A. H. (1995). The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chopra, S. K., D’Amato, A. (1991). Whales: Their emerging right to life. American Journal of International Law, 85(1), 21–62.
Clark, C. W. (1980). Restricted access to common-property fishery resources: A game-theoretic analysis. In P.-T. Liu (ed.), Dynamic Optimization and Mathematical Economics (pp. 117–132). New York: Plenum Press.
Collier, J. G., Lowe, V. (1999). The Settlement of Disputes in International Law: Institutions and Procedures. New York: Oxford University Press.
Copes, P. (1986). A critical review of the individual quota as a device in fisheries management. Land Economics, 62(3), 278–291.
Cortright, D., Lopez, G. A. (eds.) (2002). Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Cruz, M. C. (1991). Population pressure, deforestation, and common property institutions: An overview. Paper presented at the Second Annual Meeting of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), Winnipeg, September 26–29.
Dahlman, C. J. (1980). The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Alessi, L. (1993). How markets alleviate scarcity. In V. Ostrom, D. Feeny & H. Picht (eds.), Rethinking Institutional Analysis and Development: Issues, Alternatives, and Choices (pp. 339–376). San Francisco: ICS Press.
Ebbin, S. A. (2002). Enhanced fit through institutional interplay in the Pacific Northwest salmon co-management regime. Marine Policy, 26, 253–259.
Feeny, D., Berkes, F., McCay, B. J., Acheson, J. M. (1990). The tragedy of the commons: Twenty-two years later. Human Ecology, 18(1), 1–19.
Franzen, A. (1994). Group size effects in social dilemmas: A review of the experimental literature and some new results for one-shot N-PD games. In U. Schulz, W. Albers & U. Mueller (eds.), Social Dilemmas and Cooperation (pp. 117–145). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Friedheim, R. (ed.) (2001). Toward a Sustainable Whaling Regime. Seattle: University of Washington Press; Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press.
Gibson, C., Williams, J., Ostrom, E. (2005). Local enforcement and better forests. World Development, 33(2), 273–284.
Gillespie, A. (2002). Forum shopping in international environmental law: The IWC, CITES, and the management of Cetaceans. Ocean Development & International Law, 33(1), 17–56.
Goodwin, M. (1994). Nine principles for making virtual communities work. Wired, 2(6) (June), 72–73.
Gordon, H. S. (1954). The economic theory of a common property resource: The fishery. Journal of Political Economy, 62 (April), 124–142.
Haas, P. M. (1989). Do regimes matter? Epistemic communities and Mediterranean pollution control. International Organization, 43, 378–403.
Hanisch, M., McGinnis, M. (2005). Analyzing problems of polycentric governance in the growing EU. Paper presented at Workshop on Analyzing Problems of Polycentric Governance in the Growing EU, Humboldt University, Berlin, June 16–17, 2005. http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop/papers/intro_berlin.pdf.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.
Hardin, G. (1978). Political requirements for preserving our common heritage. In H. P. Bokaw (ed.), Wildlife and America (pp. 310–317). Washington, DC: Council on Environmental Quality.
Hayes, T., Ostrom, E. (2005). Conserving the world’s forests: Are protected areas the only way? Indiana Law Review, 38(3), 595–619.
Heikkila, T., Gerlak, A. K. (2005). The formation of large-scale collaborative resource management institutions: Clarifying the roles of stakeholders, science, and institutions. Policy Studies Journal, 33(4), 583–612.
Hurwicz, L. (1973). The design of mechanisms for resource allocation. American Economic Review, 63(2), 1–30.
Jones, E. C. (2003). Building on Ostrom’s “the rudiments of a theory of the origins, survival, and performance of common-property institutions”. Journal of Ecological Anthropology, 7, 65–72.
Keohane, R. O. (1984). After Hegemony. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Keohane, R. O. (2001). Governance in a partially globalized world. American Political Science Review, 95(1), 1–13.
Kirch, P. V. (1997). Microcosmic histories: Island perspectives on “global” change. American Anthropologist, 99(1), 30–42.
Kollock, P. (1997). Design principles for online communities. In The Internet and Society: Harvard Conference Proceedings. Cambridge, MA: O’Reilly & Associates.
Koremenos, B., Lipson, C., Snidal, D. (eds.) (2004). The Rational Design of International Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lam, W. F. (1998). Governing Irrigation Systems in Nepal: Institutions, Infrastructure, and Collective Action. Oakland, CA: ICS Press.
Lambin, E. F., et al. (2001). The causes of land-use and land-cover change: Moving beyond the myths. Global Environmental Change, 11, 261–269.
Lele, U. (ed.) (2002). Managing a Global Resource: Challenges of Forest Conservation and Development. World Bank Series on Evaluation and Development, vol. 5. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Lichbach, M. I. (1996). The Cooperator’s Dilemma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Mattli, W. (2001). Private litigation in a global economy: From litigation to arbitration. International Organization, 55(4) (October), 919–947.
McGinnis, M. (ed.) (2000). Polycentric Games and Institutions: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
McGinnis, M., Ostrom, E. (1992). Institutional analysis and global climate change: Design principles for robust international regimes. In M. Rice, J. Snow & H. Jacobson (eds.), Global Climate Change: Social and Economic Research Issues. Proceedings of a conference held at Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, IL, pp. 45–85.
Miller, G. J. (1992). Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Moe, T. M. (1984). The new economics of organization. American Journal of Political Science, 28, 739–777.
Nadelmann, E. A. (1990). Global prohibition regimes: The evolution of norms in international society. International Organization, 44, 479–526.
Orrego Vicuña, F. (2004). International Dispute Settlement in an Evolving Global Society: Constitutionalization, Accessibility, Privatization. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C., Norgaard, R., Policansky, D. (1999). Revisiting the commons: Local lessons, global challenges. Science, 283, 278–282.
Ostrom, E., Gardner, R., Walker, J. M. (1994). Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Ostrom, E., Ostrom, V. (1977). Public goods and public choices. In E. S. Savas (ed.), Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance (pp. 7–49). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Ostrom, V. (2007). The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Petersmann, E.-U. (1997). The GATT/WTO Dispute Settlement System: International Law, International Organizations, and Dispute Settlement. London and Boston: Kluwer Law International.
Polanyi, M. (1951). The Logic of Liberty: Reflections and Rejoinders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reinicke, W. H. (1998). Global Public Policy: Governing Without Government? Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Rudolph, C. (2001). Constructing an atrocities regime: The politics of war crimes tribunals. International Organization, 55(3) (September), 655–691.
Samuelson, P. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditure. Review of Economics and Statistics, 36, 387–389.
Sandell, R., Stern, C. (1998). Group size and the logic of collective action: A network analysis of a Swedish temperance movement 1896–1937. Rationality and Society, 10(3), 327–345.
Schaefer, M. (1957). Some considerations of population dynamics and economics in relation to the management of the commercial marine fisheries. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 14, 669–681.
Scott, A. (1979). Development of economic theory of fisheries regulation. Journal of the Fisheries Board of Canada, 36, 725–740.
Scott, A. (1982). Regulation and the location of jurisdictional powers: The fishery. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 20, 780–805.
Shepsle, K. A. (1989). Studying institutions: Some lessons from the rational choice approach. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1, 131–149.
Simon, H. A. (1981). The Sciences of the Artificial (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stoett, P. J. (1997). The International Politics of Whaling. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Tang, S. Y. (1992). Institutions and Collective Action: Self-Governance in Irrigation. San Francisco: ICS Press.
Tostensen, A., Bull, B. (2002). Are smart sanctions feasible? World Politics, 54(3) (April), 373–403.
Townsend, R. E. (1986). A critique of models of the American lobster fishery. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 13, 277–291.
Townsend, R. E., Wilson, J. (1987). An economic view of the ‘tragedy of the commons’. In B. J. McCay & J. M. Acheson (eds.), The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources (pp. 311–326). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Uzawa, H. (2005). Economic Analysis of Social Common Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Walker, J. M., Gardner, R., Ostrom, E. (1991). Rent dissipation and balanced deviation disequilibrium in common-pool resources: Experimental evidence. In R. Selten (ed.), Game Equilibrium Models II: Methods, Morals, and Markets (pp. 337–367). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Weimer, D. L., Vining, A. R. (1989). Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Weinstein, M. S. (2000). Pieces of the puzzle: Solutions for community-based fisheries management from native Canadians, Japanese cooperatives, and common property researchers. Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 12(2), 375–412.
Wilson, J. A. (2002). Scientific uncertainty, complex systems, and the design of common-pool institutions. In E. Ostrom, T. Dietz, N. Dolšak, P. C. Stern, S. Stonich & E. Weber (eds.), The Drama of the Commons (pp. 327–329). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Young, O. R. (1989). The politics of international regime formation: Managing natural resources and the environment. International Organization, 43, 349–375.
Young, O. R. (1994). International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Young, O. R. (ed.) (1999). The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: Causal Connections and Behavioral Mechanisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Young, O. R. (2002). Institutional interplay: The environmental consequences of cross-scale interactions. In E. Ostrom, T. Dietz, N. Dolšak, P. C. Stern, S. Stonich & E. Weber (eds.), The Drama of the Commons (pp. 263–292). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Zacher, M. W., with Sutton, B. A. (1996). Governing Global Networks: International Regimes for Transportation and Communications. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McGinnis, M., Ostrom, E. (2008). Will Lessons from Small-Scale Social Dilemmas Scale Up?. In: Biel, A., Eek, D., Gärling, T., Gustafsson, M. (eds) New Issues and Paradigms in Research on Social Dilemmas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72596-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72596-3_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-72595-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-72596-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)