Ostrom explains research

By Ellen Liu     9/30/10 7:00pm

Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, visited Rice Sept. 23 to speak at the biennial Social Dilemmas Conference, held in the Baker Institute for Public Policy by the School of Social Sciences. The program featured presentations by prominent social speakers on causes and solutions for today's collective issues. Ostrom's lecture was entitled "Cooperating for the Common Good: Challenging Supposed Impossibilities and Panaceas." During her speech, Ostrom addressed the research she had done on the management of common resources. Ostrom said that humans can work together to combat the tragedy of the commons - the belief that people, being self-interested, will deplete a shared resource - and instead ensure resource sustainability. Ostrom's findings contradict the popular belief that this phenomenon is inevitable. Ostrom said that communities which utilize common resources can devise regulatory systems that help prevent resource exhaustion. In fact, she said that when people communicate, they manage natural resources with 92 percent optimality.

Ostrom listed a few of the studies she conducted while investigating the tragedy of the commons, including how Africans maintain their grazing pastures and how Nepalese villagers organize their irrigation systems.

Regarding the latter topic, Ostrom described her trip to a village in Nepal where she observed a punishment system the residents had devised to reprimand those who shirked their planting and irrigation duties. Ostrom said that in the village, there were three men who, if all three agreed that someone wasn't doing their fair share of the work, could confiscate the troublemaker's cow.

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"[We came upon] a beautiful green area, and there was a fence in the middle, and there was a cow in the middle, just fenced in," Ostrom said. "We [asked around and] found out it was a cow jail."

All of the other residents could milk the cow to feed the poor children in the village. Ostrom said this punishment was effective in regulating irrigation and farming responsibilities.

"As soon as the [delinquent] person made a settlement with the irrigation society of whatever kind needed, he could get his cow back," Ostrom said. "The people would forever keep that in mind."

According to Ostrom, the villagers' face-to-face communication lowed them to increase cooperation and employ their natural resources at an almost optimal level. She said that if they had made the decisions without dialogue, significant over-harvesting would have occurred.

Ostrom also talked about her research in forests around the world with the International Forestry Resources and Institutions research program. She said she learned that users of the forests actively monitor their own harvesting levels. According to Ostrom, humans think rationally, learn from experience and are far from helpless.

In closing, Ostrom said that her future research pursuits include common health care, sustainable urban environment, collective action and polycentric approaches to climate change, where different layers of government have different responsibilities. She also said that people who use natural resources in good condition have a long-term interest in monitoring resource quality and building trust in other users through a polycentric system.

"We have to learn how to deal with the complexity and not avoid it," Ostrom said. "The federal system in the U.S. is very national, which can be seen as chaotic. However, we are able to create special districts and bind things in a certain way."

Ostrom cited school districts as an example of boundaries the national government had created. She said there used to be more than 110,000 school districts, which some people saw as too many and too small.

"Today, the view is: If we consolidate school districts, we'll save money and get public education improved," Ostrom said. "In reality, schools that are consolidated are not doing so well. For example, the crime rates in big schools are very high."

According to Ostrom, large groups that split into smaller, layered groups are more important for governance. Ostrom said people should study the several metropolitan areas that have the lowest health care costs and highest levels of health and watch the interactions of current societies to learn from their mistakes.

"I'm anti-panacea," Ostrom said. "In other words, I believe there isn't just one way to fix things. [To find the full solution], you must figure out how to allow for energy to enter what you're doing."

Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 for her analysis of how people deal with the tragedy of the commons and other economic phenomena. Currently, she is a political science professor and senior research director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University.

After the presentation, audience members mingled to talk about Ostrom's ideas and speak with her.

"There's a lot to think about with regard to solving problems in communities, especially issues that provoke the most potential incentives for overuse or under-provision of certain things," political science graduate student William Meddaugh said. "[Ostrom's] work deals with the foundation of every public policy concern that you can think of."

Meddaugh said he believes certain extensions of Ostrom's ideas were good because some kind of motivational design might help resolve common issues.

Political Science Professor Rick Wilson, who organized the conference, discussed Ostrom's support of polycentrism. He said that such a structure would make problem solving very difficult but also give people more options for organizing. According to Wilson, Ostrom wanted to build huge cities with many levels of cooperation, and he believes that her solutions involve a balance of governmental control and free enterprise.

While answering audience questions, Ostrom said she believes her most controversial discovery is that people who are poor but respect one another can work together to solve problems that wealthy people can't. According to her, the asset of the common people is mutual trust.

Finally, Ostrom offered advice for undergraduates interested in research.

"Pick areas you're interested in," Ostrom said. "Don't let academics say, 'This is the hot area.' Frequently, we can study multiple things well and at the same time.

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