Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of Political Economy: Policy Applications and Extensions

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Elinor (Lin) Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her pathbreaking research on "economic governance, especially the commons," but she also made important contributions to several other fields of political economy and public policy. The range of topics she covered and the multiple methods she used might convey the mistaken impression that her body of work is disjointed and incoherent. This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin, alone or with various coauthors (most notably including her husband and partner, Vincent), supplemented by others expanding on their work, brings together the common strands of research that serve to tie her impressive oeuvre together. That oeuvre, together with Vincent's own impressive body of work, has come to define a distinctive school of political-economic thought, the "Bloomington School." Each of the four volumes is organized around a central theme of Lin's work. The fourth and final volume, "Policy Applications and Extensions," collects sixteen papers that explore further applications and extensions of Ostrom's work. In fact, Ostrom had been writing about the scaling up of Bloomington School ideas to treat such problems since the mid-1990's. Her contributions to the climate change literature have been very impactful. An increasing number of scholars working on climate policy are now promoting various polycentric approaches to the problem. Equally influential, even seminal, was Ostrom's work (with Charlotte Hess) on the so-called "knowledge commons," a "hot" area of research dealing with contested issues such as the appropriate balance between private ownershipand open-access to information resources. The third part of the volume moves from applications of Ostrom's ideas to continuing her own efforts to improve the IAD and SES frameworks so as to make them even more useful for researchers and analysts. Finally, the volume concludes with two papers by Ostrom reflecting on continuing challenges confronting the social sciences generally and interdisciplinary research in particular. They are reminders that much work remains to be done.

Reviews

This volume completes and brings to a climax this definitive compendium of readings in honor of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It contains pathbreaking essays by the Ostroms and others on polycentric governance, climate change, sustainability and other vital issues. It travels well beyond Lins famous work on common-pool resources, but it extends analytical frameworks that she originally developed in that context. This work is on the frontier of discovery in social science and it addresses several of the most urgent problems of our time. It is a magnificent memorial to the Ostroms and their legacy. -- Geoffrey M. Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire
With this volume, Daniel H. Cole and Michael D. McGinnis complete the task they set for themselves, to bring out a four-volume compendium of readings in honor of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. This is truly an admirable achievement, conveying a might lesson on empirically informed theory as the touchstone of good social science. By its very nature, then, the volume is not the final volume of Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School of Political Economy but a point of departure for new avenues of inquiry. The message is clear: the Ostrom ideas and research methods can flourish and expand without the Ostromsjust as Vincent and Lin hoped. -- Filippo Sabetti, McGill University
This is a remarkable collection that includes a beautiful mix of classics and less-known papers. The volume promises to become an extremely valuable reference for public policy scholars in years to come. Despite the diversity of contributions, all papers demonstrate, in their own unique ways, how relevant and valuable the Workshop approach to institutional analysis is for public policy applications. -- Krister Andersson, University of Colorado

Author Bio

Daniel H. Cole is professor of law and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. Michael D. McGinnis is associate dean for social & historical sciences and graduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington.