The Ostroms and the contestable nature of goods: beyond taxonomies and toward institutional polycentricity

Abstract

This paper builds on the Ostroms' oeuvre to suggest that the binary Samuelsonian taxonomy of goods – or the ‘sterile dichotomy’, as Elinor Ostrom calls it – cannot serve as a reliable guide for public policy. Using the Ostroms' insights on co-production, institutional matching, and polycentricity, we argue that the ‘inherent’ nature of goods and their specific taxonomy are not static and definitive concepts but are instead contestable and dynamic features that are institutionally contingent. We explore four crucial mechanisms and/or contexts, not altogether unrelated, whereby the nature of goods becomes contestable and malleable: namely, (1) technological and geographical factors, (2) coproduction and entrepreneurial ingenuity, (3) bundling and unbundling of services, and (4) ideologies and regime shifts. This exercise has twofold purposes. First, we generalize the notion that there is nothing ‘inherent’ in the nature of goods and services and that they are fluid, heterogeneous, and malleable concepts. Second, we contribute to the debate on the provision of public goods and the role of civil society by highlighting the need for institutional malleability and diversity adaptive to changing technology, contexts, and institutional conditions.

Social entrepreneurship, co‐production, and post‐disaster recovery

“…By doing so, we are able to explore the critical link between citizenship and social agency, which has important implications not only for disaster studies, but also for policy studies in general. This connection between citizenship and social agency is central to analyses of co-production and local public economies (Levine and Fisher, 1984;Ostrom, 1996;Alford, 2002;Aligica, 2018;Rayamajhee and Paniagua, 2021). This point has been articulated by several scholars from the Ostromian tradition, most notably Aligica (2018).…”

A polycentric approach for pandemic governance: nested externalities and co-production challenges

“…Sixty years ago, Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren (1961) (OTW) challenged the dominant view that a multiplicity of governmental units was ‘pathological’ and that some form of ‘gargantua’ was needed to reduce duplication, improve governance, and increase efficiency in public goods delivery (Ostrom et al ., 1961). OTW's work motivated decades of investigations by scholars associated with the Bloomington school of political economy, most notably by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, that extended beyond metropolitan governance and encompassed common pool resources, police services, disaster management, and global climate change (Hodgson, 2013; Ostrom, 1990, 2010a, 2012; Ostrom et al ., 1978; Rayamajhee, 2020; Rayamajhee and Paniagua, 2021; Thiel et al ., 2019). 1 These studies overwhelming show that diverse and complex patterns of organizations are not pathological simply because they do not match the scholarly expectations regarding processes and outcomes.…”

“…1 These studies overwhelming show that diverse and complex patterns of organizations are not pathological simply because they do not match the scholarly expectations regarding processes and outcomes. Collective challenges we face in the real world are diverse: even the same collective action problem takes on a variety of forms based on the existing institutions and geographical constraints (Ostrom, 1990; Rayamajhee and Paniagua, 2021). Individuals and societies regularly devise new institutions and modify existing ones to tackle the messy challenges of the real world.…”

“…Individuals and societies regularly devise new institutions and modify existing ones to tackle the messy challenges of the real world. No single form of organization can be optimal simply because it fits the criteria established by an outsider analyst (Ostrom and Parks, 1999; Rayamajhee and Paniagua, 2021).…”

“…Global cooperation from national governments and a unified worldwide effort are often seen as the only paths to ending a pandemic (UN News, 2020). Moreover, such analyses overlook the roles of informal institutions such as culture and social relations in influencing societal response to both the pandemic and formal governmental restrictions (Bentkowska, 2021; Rayamajhee, 2020; Rayamajhee and Paniagua, 2021). Since pandemics present large-scale externalities, policy analysts tend to treat pandemic challenges as homogenous problems to be solved at a national or global level, disregarding institutional diversity and heterogeneity of challenges.…”