Podcasts about Elinor Ostrom

How can Bioregionalism supplant the nation state as the natural unit of civilisation? Joe Brewer is living, breathing and teaching the ways we can work together with each other and the natural flows of water and life. We know that the current paradigm is breaking apart in real time, but how do we become the light that shines through the cracks?  How do we build ways of being that reunite us with the web of life, create new/old ways of letting value flow and become what humanity has been and could be: stewards of that massive, magical, heartbreakingly beautiful living system that is the web of life. This week's guest, Joe Brewer, works at the leading edge of these ideas, testing out answers on the ground in communities of place, purpose and passion around the world.  Joe is a trans-disciplinary systems thinker and Earth regeneration designer who has worked in everything from agroforestry work in Bioparque Móncora to starting a Waldorf Forest School (Sueños del Bosque) to co-founding a territorial foundation called Fundación Barichara Regenerativa and starting a trust to bring more local land into the commons. He was founder of the Earth Regenerators study group, which became Design School for Regenerating Earth, and is the author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth. Increasingly, he's becoming a leading global voice on the ways we can return to a bioregional way of living that is, as you'll here, how we have lived for over 99% of human history. It's the way that makes sense, that can heal our relationships to ourselves, each other and the living web of life.  The question, always, is how we make this happen? How do we shift our entire culture out of a world where lines drawn on maps are more real than the flows of a river, back to a place where clean air, clean water, clean soil are our priorities, the non-negotiable baselines from which everything else arises? How do we shift our concept of value flows away from the accumulation of stuff in a zero-sum game to a place where human needs are trusted and met?  Joe has such heart-warming, inspiring examples of how this is happening around the world: on all 5 inhabited continents, there are groups making this happen. As Joe says, this is the work of now. It's urgent. It's also the single most inspiring thing we can do. Bioregional Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-schoolDesign School for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-schoolJoe's book: The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-pathwayGovernance Futures  https://governancefutures.org/Elinor Ostrom's work on Governing the Commons https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/ostrom-governingSociocracy https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/ProSocial World https://www.prosocial.world/Joe on Accidental Gods Episode #127 https://accidentalgods.life/bio-regionalism-the-design-path-for-regenerating-earth/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

Send us a textWhen Jack Stewart turned off the internet, he discovered that digital connection often acts as a “social appetite suppressant”—satisfying on the surface, but not deeply nourishing. In this conversation, Jack explains how removing online distractions led him to seek out in-person connection, from literally knocking on neighbors' doors to organizing his own book and writing salons.We discuss the qualitative difference between digital admirers and real friends, and why meaningful conversations rarely happen through casual online chat. Jack outlines how he created formal spaces—book clubs, writing groups, salons—to foster intellectual depth and genuine community.The discussion moves to Jack's research on “common pool resources,” and the practical lessons from Nobel Prize winner Eleanor Ostrom's work on how communities can successfully govern shared spaces. We explore what makes a community sustainable, including trust, collective rule-making, and how conflict is resolved without defaulting to authority or privatization.Cecilie and Jesper share their own experiences with offline community-building and the Scandinavian tradition of “hygge” as an egalitarian way of sharing space. The episode finishes with a reflection on what it really takes to build trust, give comfort, and create belonging in a world shaped by digital isolation.

Join us as we explore the remarkable life and work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom. In this episode, we dive into her groundbreaking research on community governance and sustainable resource management—a journey that redefined how we approach the "tragedy of the commons." From her humble beginnings in Los Angeles to her rise as a transformative figure in economics and political science, learn how Elinor's insights continue to inspire innovative, community-led solutions around the world. Listen in to her inspiring story that reveals how local wisdom and collaboration can drive global change. Don't forget to follow us for more empowering stories from trailblazing women in science!

Send us a textWhy do harmful policies like tariffs keep coming back despite universal condemnation from economists? The answer lies in the dynamics of collective action and concentrated interests.In this eye-opening conversation with G. Patrick Lynch, Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund, Mike Munger explores the fascinating world of public choice theory and how it explains some of democracy's most persistent puzzles. Lynch, a self-described "popularizer of public choice," breaks down complex economic principles into digestible insights about political behavior.The discussion begins with the foundations of public choice theory—the application of economic reasoning to political decisions. Far from portraying politicians as uniquely self-interested, public choice simply acknowledges that all humans respond to incentives, whether in markets or politics. As Lynch explains, "It's a mistake to characterize public choice as people being just materially self-interested." Even Mother Teresa was pursuing her goals single-mindedly—the definition of self-interest properly understood.When the conversation turns to tariffs, Lynch delivers a masterclass in why bad policies persist. Manufacturing interests receive concentrated benefits and organize effectively, while consumers bear diffuse costs. "That $70,000 job costs consumers $210,000 to $250,000 in increased prices," Munger notes. But since an individual consumer might pay just pennies more per purchase, they won't mobilize political opposition.Perhaps most fascinating is the exploration of Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning work on common-pool resources. Conventional wisdom suggested that without government intervention, shared resources face inevitable destruction through overuse. Yet Ostrom discovered countless examples worldwide where communities developed sophisticated management systems to sustain resources over generations.If you've ever wondered why policies that economists universally condemn keep returning, or why small groups seem to dominate our politics despite majority rule, this conversation offers profound and sometimes unsettling answers. Subscribe now for more insights that will transform how you understand politics, economics, and collective decision-making.LINKS:G. Patrick Lynch:https://www.econlib.org/author/plynch/ https://www.civitasinstitute.org/research/the-young-americas-need-each-other https://lawliberty.org/author/patrick-lynch/https://lawliberty.org/book-review/public-choice-with-chinese-characteristics/ Shaggy Dog story: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/shaggy-dog-story.html The ORIGINAL Shaggy Dog story:  https://stephengreensted.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/the-original-shaggy-dog-joke/Book'o'da Month:    Two Books, both by William Bernstein. The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2004, If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com ! You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:three mile island (07:20)resilience engineering (12:30)the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)how do you know? (14:00)scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)the novelty inequality (28:00)Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)graceful extensibility (36:20)Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)SNAFU catchers (42:00)dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)Arnold Toynbee (45:00)multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)John Doyle (54:00)Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)Lightning Round (01:01:30):Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterPassion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck TannerHeart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video seriesScrewed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilienceFind David online:Ohio State University siteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Valeria Scorza, CEO of Fundación Avina, offers a compelling exploration of how philanthropy can act as an orchestrator in addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing Latin America and the broader Global South. With a 30-year legacy of fostering sustainable development, Fundación Avina operates at the intersection of climate action, democratic innovation, and economic transformation, working through six key programs—climate, circular economy, labor innovation, biomes, democracy, and water. What sets the foundation apart is its commitment to building trust, promoting systemic change, and fostering co-creation among diverse stakeholders. At its core, Fundación Avina embraces a decentralized model, with a team of 95 staff members across 15 countries, emphasizing coordination, autonomy, and self-regulation. Beyond simply deploying grants—having mobilized over $500 million across 13,000 initiatives—the foundation plays a catalytic role in multi-stakeholder collaborations, ensuring that local knowledge and grassroots organizations shape solutions tailored to their specific contexts. Expanding beyond Latin America, the organization is increasingly forging partnerships in Africa and Asia, reinforcing a philosophy that philanthropy must be complementary rather than prescriptive, engaging both grassroots actors and large institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank. A particularly striking element of Fundación Avina's work is its long-standing engagement with access to water, an issue affecting nearly a quarter of Latin Americans, with rural communities being disproportionately impacted. Viewing water access as a fundamental human right, the foundation draws from the principles of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, advocating for decentralized, community-led governance of shared resources. Through the Latin American Association of Community Water Management Organizations and other regional initiatives, Avina has helped scale innovative, locally-driven water management solutions, from rainwater harvesting to adaptive governance structures that enhance resilience in the face of climate change. The foundation's work in Brazil's semi-arid region, for example, illustrates the power of community networks in not only implementing practical solutions like cistern installations but also shaping public policy at the national level. The conversation highlights key bottlenecks in water governance, including the misconception that solutions must always be top-down or infrastructure-heavy. Instead, Avina advocates for a model that aligns incentives across communities, governments, and the private sector, ensuring that solutions are sustainable and adapted to local realities. The role of trust is particularly emphasized as a crucial yet often overlooked form of infrastructure—essential for managing climate-induced conflicts over water scarcity and ensuring long-term collaboration across sectors. Indigenous and tribal communities also play a central role in Avina's approach, with a strong commitment to ensuring their participation in decision-making processes. From advocating for indigenous representation in climate governance discussions to recognizing traditional water conservation methods as legitimate forms of technological innovation, the foundation underscores the importance of cultural intelligence in addressing environmental challenges. This extends to Avina's broader mission of reducing power asymmetries, ensuring that historically marginalized voices are not only heard but actively shape policy and investment decisions. Fundación Avina's collaborative ethos is further exemplified by its engagement with global and regional funders. From working with One Drop Foundation, Coca-Cola Foundation, and FEMSA in the Lazos de Agua initiative to partnerships with Skoll Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Packard Foundation, Avina positions itself as a key facilitator in bringing diverse actors together to drive systemic change. Whether working with corporate foundations, development banks, or local philanthropic funds, the foundation's role is not merely to fund initiatives but to strengthen ecosystems that ensure solutions are deeply embedded in their communities and sustained over time. Ultimately, this conversation sheds light on a model of philanthropy that moves beyond traditional grant-making to embrace systemic, collaborative, and trust-driven solutions. By leveraging its position as a convener, Fundación Avina is not only addressing immediate challenges but also reshaping the way sustainable development is approached across the Global South. Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 300 case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.  

Speaker: Professor Eva Micheler (LSE)Abstract: Reliance on agency-theoretic reasoning has led to substantial theoretical and empirical advances in company law scholarship, but the narrow focus on board-level actors and phenomena has disconnected the analysis of the company from the reality of the economic organisation it is meant to enable and support. We follow Oliver Williamson's call for a ‘law, economics, and organization' approach, and build on Elinor Ostrom's ‘institutional analysis and development' framework to propose a narrative model of the company in terms of nested levels of governance. We argue that our model works as a positive description of the law as it is, and puts us in a stronger position to evaluate the likely consequences of certain normative interventions, which we illustrate with some observations about ongoing debates in corporate governance.The paper is jointly written by David Gindis and Eva Micheler and can be found at Taylor and Francis Online.Eva Micheler studied law at the University of Vienna and at the University of Oxford before joining LSE Law School in 2001. She is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. Professor Micheler is also on the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE. She was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speaker: Professor Eva Micheler (LSE)Abstract: Reliance on agency-theoretic reasoning has led to substantial theoretical and empirical advances in company law scholarship, but the narrow focus on board-level actors and phenomena has disconnected the analysis of the company from the reality of the economic organisation it is meant to enable and support. We follow Oliver Williamson's call for a ‘law, economics, and organization' approach, and build on Elinor Ostrom's ‘institutional analysis and development' framework to propose a narrative model of the company in terms of nested levels of governance. We argue that our model works as a positive description of the law as it is, and puts us in a stronger position to evaluate the likely consequences of certain normative interventions, which we illustrate with some observations about ongoing debates in corporate governance.The paper is jointly written by David Gindis and Eva Micheler and can be found at Taylor and Francis Online.Eva Micheler studied law at the University of Vienna and at the University of Oxford before joining LSE Law School in 2001. She is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. Professor Micheler is also on the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE. She was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke gives the opening keynote lecture at the 2022 Markets & Society conference. In this lecture, Boettke speaks on the importance of “relations before transactions”, emphasizes the impact of social interactions on economic activity and the role of trust, norms, and institutions, and highlights the insights of Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, and Elinor Ostrom. Boettke explores the intersections between markets and society, opening the conference with a discussion of its theme.Peter Boettke is a Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University and Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has published numerous books including Money and the Rule of Law: Generality and Predictability in Monetary Institutions (2021), Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (2012), and Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School (2009).This lecture has been published in the Markets & Society Journal, Volume 1 Issue 1, as "Toward a Theory of Social Cooperation under the Division of Labor." Learn more about the Markets & Society conference and journal here.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is streaming! Subscribe today and listen to seasons one and two.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Subscribe to Grand Tamasha on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. This is the 2024 job market series where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about the latest research in India.  I spoke with Sukrit Puri, who is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT and an Elinor Ostrom fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focus is on the entanglement between business and politics in emerging economies, and his dissertation focuses on family firms in India. We discussed his job market paper, Corporate Kinship: Political Attachments of the Family Firm, we talked about how family firms differ from management and expert run businesses in India, whether it is in their firm structure or their political giving, whether family firms are most strategic or expressive in politics, the differences in the nature of the quid pro quo for a family firm versus a management run firm, the latest electoral bond scheme, and much more. Recorded September 11th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Sukrit on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:16) - Grand Tamasha (00:03:05) - Analyzing Family-Run Firms and Campaign Donations    (00:07:06) - How Family Businesses Donate Politically in Relation to Corporations and Individuals (00:10:17) - Distinctions Between Family-Run and Non-Family-Run Firms (00:14:48) - Political Donations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Overlap or Distinct Strategies? (00:19:35) - The Hidden Side of Campaign Contributions (00:25:56) - Ethnic Identity in Relation to Expressive Giving (00:28:59) - Challenges in Measuring Quid Pro Quo Arrangements (00:35:55) - The Impact of Demonetization on Political Donations (00:37:06) - Assessing the Reaction to the Information Shock from Mandated Disclosures (00:45:22) - Understanding the Reputational Impact of Political Donations (00:51:15) - Is Uncertainty a Factor? (00:57:11) - Outro

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveHow does order emerge from anarchy? How do human beings create institutions? Can big problems — like climate change, income inequality, or AI alignment — find solutions “from below,” through collective action, rather than “from above,” i.e., imposed by regulatory bodies?Today's guest is a fascinating economist. Professor Paul Dragoș Aligică is a senior research fellow at the Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Professor of Governance at the University of Bucharest. Paul believes that we are living through the third great moment in human history, after the transition to agriculture and the industrial revolution. What will this third moment be about?Far too broad to pigeonhole, he's a visionary public choice theorist and a student of renowned economists Vincent and Elinor Ostrom (the latter won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009). Paul has thought long and hard about the strange inflection point our world seems to be hurtling towards. It's a slow burn of an episode, one where interesting and complex ideas are laid out carefully, before Damir and Santiago engage Paul in sussing out their implications. Does Paul think that public choice theory means the world has hope? How do we fix the seemingly intractable problems posed by capitalism and globalization? Tune in to find out.Required Reading and Viewing:* Paul Dragoș Aligică's personal website.* Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Amazon). * What is the Tragedy of the Commons? (Harvard Business School). * Elinor Ostrom on Ending the Tragedy of the Commons (Big Think on YouTube). * Santiago Ramos, “What Does McDonald's Mean?” (WoC).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

He's an economist who cares more about people than numbers -- and he thinks his field needs more sociology and anthropology in it. Vijayendra (Biju) Rao joins Amit Varma in episode 392 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about what makes him angry and what brings him peace. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Vijayendra (Biju) Rao on Twitter, Google Scholar, The World Bank and his own website. 2. Biju Rao's blog at the World Bank. 3. Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? -- Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao. 4. Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies -- Paromita Sanyal and Vijayendra Rao. 5. Can Economics Become More Reflexive? -- Vijayendra Rao. 6. Vamsha Vriksha -- Girish Karnad. 7. ‘I want absolute commitment to our gharana': A tribute to Rajshekhar Mansur and his music -- Vijayendra Rao. 8. The Life and Work of Ashwini Deshpande — Episode 298 of The Seen and the Unseen. 9. Two Hundred and Fifty-Thousand Democracies: A Review of Village Government in India -- Siddharth George, Vijaendra Rao and MR Sharan. 10. Last Among Equals : Power Caste And Politics In Bihar's Villages -- MR Sharan. 11. Lant Pritchett Is on Team Prosperity — Episode 379 of The Seen and the Unseen. 12. National Development Delivers: And How! And How? — Lant Pritchett. 13. The Perils of Partial Attribution: Let's All Play for Team Development — Lant Pritchett. 14. The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India -- Vijayendra Rao. 15. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto — Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Shephali Bhatt Is Searching for the Incredible -- Episode 391 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Jiddu Krishnamurti on Wikipedia, Britannica and Amazon. 18. Biju Rao listens to Jiddu Krishnamurthy. 19. Ben Hur -- William Wyler. 20. Trade, Institutions and Ethnic Tolerance: Evidence from South Asia -- Saumitra Jha. 21. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 22. Remnants of a Separation — Aanchal Malhotra. 23. Deliberative Democracy -- Jon Elster. 24. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 25. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State — Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 26. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 27. Urban Governance in India — Episode 31 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 28. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 29. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 30. Accelerating India's Development — Karthik Muralidharan. 31. The Added Value of Local Democracy -- Abhishek Arora, Siddharth George, Vijayendra Rao and MR Sharan. 32. Some memories of VKRV Rao -- Vijayendra Rao. 33. The Foundation Series — Isaac Asimov. 34. Lawrence of Arabia -- David Lean. 35. Gandhi -- Richard Attenborough. 36. The Story of My Experiments with Truth -- Mohandas Gandhi. 37. Bhagavad Gita on Wikipedia and Amazon. 38. KT Achaya on Amazon. 39. The Emergency: A Personal History — Coomi Kapoor. 40. My Varied Life in Management: A Short Memoir -- SL Rao. 41. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee — Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 42. Ram Guha Writes a Letter to a Friend -- Episode 371 of The Seen and the Unseen. 43. Terror as a Bargaining Instrument : A Case Study of Dowry Violence in Rural India -- Francis Bloch and Vijayendra Rao. 44. Domestic Violence and Intra-Household Resource Allocation in Rural India: An Exercise in Participatory Econometrics -- Vijayendra Rao. 45. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. 46. Narrative Economics -- Robert J Shiller. 47. Culture and Public Action -- Edited by Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton. 48. The Capacity to Aspire -- Arjun Appadurai. 49. Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming -- Agnes Callard. 50. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind -- Tom Holland. 51. PV Sukhatme in EPW. 52. India Needs Decentralization -- Episode 47 of Everything if Everything. 53. Deliberative Inequality:  A Text-As-Data Study of India's Village Assemblies -- Ramya Parthasarathy, Vijayendra Rao and Nethra Palaniswamy. 54. A Method to Scale Up Interpretive Qualitative Analysis with An Application to Aspirations among Refugees and Hosts in Bangladesh -- Julian Ashwin, Vijayendra Rao, Monica Biradavolu, Aditya Chhabra, Afsana Khan, Arshia Haque and Nandini Krishnan. 55. Using Large-Language Models for Qualitative Analysis Can Introduce Serious Bias -- Julian Ashwin, Aditya Chhabra and Vijayendra Rao. 56. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 57. Audacious Hope: An Archive of How Democracy is Being Saved in India -- Indrajit Roy. 58. Poverty and the Quest for Life -- Bhrigupati Singh. 59. Recasting Culture to Undo Gender: A Sociological Analysis of Jeevika in Rural Bihar, India -- Paromita Sanyal, Vijayendra Rao and Shruti Majumdar. 60. We Are Poor but So Many -- Ela Bhatt. 61. Premature Imitation and India's Flailing State — Shruti Rajagopalan & Alexander Tabarrok. 62. James Wolfensohn in Wikipedia and The World Bank. 63. Arati Kumar-Rao Took a One-Way Ticket -- Episode 383 of The Seen and the Unseen. 64. Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink — Arati Kumar-Rao. 65. Amitav Ghosh on Amazon. 66. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life -- Nicholas Phillipson. 67. Elinor Ostrom on Amazon, Britannica, Wikipedia and EconLib. 68. Jane Mansbridge on Amazon, Wikipedia, and Google Scholar. 69. Albert O Hirschman on Amazon and Wikipedia. 70. Mughal-e-Azam -- K Asif. 71. Samskara -- Pattabhirama Reddy. 72. The Wire -- David Simon. 73. Deadwood -- David Milch. 74. Biju Rao on Democracy, Deliberation, and Development -- the Ideas of India podcast with Shruti Rajagopalan. Biju Rao's Specially curated music recommendations: 1. The Senior Dagar Brothers (Moinuddin & Aminuddin Dagar) performing (Komal Rishab) Asavari and Kamboji. 2. Raghunath Panigrahi performing Ashtapadi from the Geeta Govinda and Lalita Lavanga. 3. Amir Khan performing Lalit and Jog. 4. Vilayat Khan performing Sanjh Saravali and Hameer. 5. Ravi Shankar performing Jaijaiwanti and Tilak Shyam (full concert) and Durga. 6. Faiyaz Khan performing Raga Darbari and Raga Des. 7. N Rajam performing a full concert with Gorakh Kalyan, Sawani Barwa, Hamir, Malkauns. 8. Kumar Gandharva performing Tulsidas – Ek Darshan and Surdas – Ek Darshan. 9. Bhimsen Joshi performing Ragas Chhaya and Chhaya Malhar & Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada – Bhajan in Raga Bhairavi (original recording from 1960). The Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana: 1. Mallikarjun Mansur in a guided Listening Session by Irfan Zuberi, and performing Basanti Kedar and Tilak Kamod. 2. Kesarbai Kerkar performing Lalit and Bhairavi. 3. Moghubai Kurdikar performing Kedar and Suddha Nat. 4. Kishori Amonkar performing Bhimpalas and Bhoop(ali). 5. Some performances by Rajshekhar Mansur are linked in Biju Rao's piece on him. Karnatic Music: 1. TM Krishna performing Krishna Nee Begane Baaro, Yamuna Kalyani (Yaman Kalyan) and Nalinakanthi (closest Hindustani equivalent is Tilak Kamod). 2. MD Ramanathan performing Bhavayami – Raga Malika and Samaja Vara Gamana – Ragam Hindolam (Malkauns). 3. Aruna Sairam performing a full concert. 4. Madurai Mani Iyer performing Taaye Yoshade. 5. MS Subbulakshmi performing a full Concert from 1966 and Bhaja Govindam (Ragamalika). 6. TR Mahalingam performing Swara Raga Sudha – Shankarabharanam. Jugalbandis: 1. Ali Akbar Khan and Vilayat Khan performing Marwa. 2. Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar performing Jaijaiwanti. 3. N Rajam with her brother TN Krishnan performing Raga Hamsadhwani. Amit's newsletter is active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘The Iconoclast' by Simahina.

Two seemingly similar parking lots at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, couldn't be more different in the emergent behaviors they foster. From the orderly lines of the 85-space lot to the chaotic dynamics of the smaller 19-space circular lot, discover how price rationing, queue formation, and transaction costs play critical roles in these everyday systems.Things take s a quirky turn with the arrival of a man in a pork pie fedora who disrupts these parking norms, buying spaces directly from beachgoers. This unconventional behavior prompts a deeper discussion on the breakdown of social rules and the challenges of maintaining order when outsiders intervene. Wrightsville Beach Parking InformationLocke and Property Porkpie Fedoras, if you NEED one now!Elinor Ostrom and Property NormsTo Consumers, ALL Costs are Transaction Costs (AIER)Economic Benefits of Beach Access Points(Parking) Life Is A BeachIf you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com ! You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

Elinor Ostrom ist als erste Frau mit dem Wirtschaftsnobelpreis ausgezeichnet worden. Die us-amerikanische Politikwissenschafterin erhielt die Auszeichnung 2009. Eine wichtige Rolle in ihrer Forschung spielten unter anderem Walliser Alpweiden und wie diese genutzt werden.

Junto al periodista Julián Orozco buscamos alternativas a nuestro sistema económico actual. 

RESUMEN Desde los trabajos de Elinor Ostrom de la década de 1990, los análisis sobre los espacios comunales y mancomunales han incorporado progresivamente nuevos enfoques históricos y, más recientemente, arqueológicos, que los han dotado de gran profundidad y complejidad. Sin embargo, son menos los análisis de estos espacios desde una perspectiva de larga duración histórica, que permitan no solo abordar sus orígenes históricos, sino también sus transformaciones dentro de contextos históricos determinados. En este trabajo, desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar que incluye el análisis de la documentación histórica, arqueológica y etnográfica, se aborda la historia de los espacios comunales y mancomunales de las aldeas de Casaio y Lardeira (Ourense, Galicia), analizando los factores sociales, económicos y políticos que influyeron en la conformación de estos espacios, así como de los usos y prácticas ejercidos en ellos. Lara Barros Alfaro [orcid.org/0000-0002-4273-0971] es licenciada en Historia por la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela y Máster Interuniversitario en Historia Contemporánea. Está especializada en el análisis histórico de los espacios de gestión comunal en el noroeste peninsular y en el asesoramiento histórico a las comunidades de montes. Actualmente coordina el proyecto MULIME de investigación independiente sobre los montes comunales en Galicia. Carlos Tejerizo-García [orcid.org/0000-0001-9479-2720] es doctor en Historia por la Universidad del País Vasco y licenciado en Ciencias Políticas por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. Su especialidad es la arqueología del campesinado en la larga duración histórica. Actualmente es investigador postdoctoral en la Universidad de Génova con un proyecto sobre el impacto de la industrialización en el mundo rural del noroeste peninsular. Gonzalo J. Escudero Manzano [orcid.org/0000-0001-7331-1043] es doctor en Historia y Arqueología por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Su principal línea de investigación trata sobre la formación, la expansión y la implantación de la autoridad y del poder astur-leonés, con especial atención al papel desempeñado por los representantes de las comunidades locales. Actualmente es beneficiario de un contrato posdoctoral «Margarita Salas» financiado por la Unión Europea a través del programa «NextGenerationEU». Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, Jordan interviews Pablo Paniagua Prieto and Veeshan Rayamajhee on their co-authored work, "Governing the Global Fisheries Commons." On this episode and in their article, they address the challenges of overfishing and the depletion of global fisheries. They critique one-size-fits-all solutions, advocating for an approach that recognizes overfishing as a complex set of interconnected problems across various jurisdictions. Drawing from Elinor Ostrom's insights, they propose combining market-based strategies, such as individual transferable quotas, with government interventions like removing harmful subsidies, and highlight the importance of local knowledge, community participation, and multi-layered solutions to effectively govern the global fisheries commons.Pablo Paniagua Prieto is an economist and engineer from Politecnico di Milano and Professor of Political Economy at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. Pablo is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.Veeshan Rayamajhee is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University and a faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise. Veeshan is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Thank you to the folks at Sustain (https://sustainoss.org/) for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast! CHAOSScast – Episode 77 In this episode of CHAOSScast, host Dawn Foster has a compelling discussion with three guests from Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office: Emma Irwin, James Siri, and Justin Gosses. The conversation includes how Microsoft measures the health of open source communities, their experiences with the CHAOSS Community, and the critical role of open source within the organization. Topics such as use of metrics, tackling security issues within scaling, and the future of metrics within the company were discussed. Also, they talk about the value of open source contributions within the business, the role of internal communities, and how they track and improve processes at Microsoft, emphasizing the importance of open source impact both externally and internally. Download this episode now to hear more! [00:00:24] Emma, James, and Justin share their backgrounds with us. [00:01:53] Emma discusses Microsoft's multi-tier approach to metrics, focusing on maintainers' value to products and communities, component intelligence, and engineering standards on GitHub. [00:04:06] James elaborates on his focus on GitHub metrics, the development of policy and tooling for security, and simplifying developers' workflow. [00:04:51] Justin categorizes metrics into those for maintainers, for management, and for developers making decisions on dependencies. He talks about challenges in managing the scale of data from 13,000 repositories and the importance of security metrics. [00:05:37] Emma discusses an experiment with the OpenSSF scorecard for repository security and the effort to motivate improvements in this area. She highlights the challenges of instilling these practices as part of the culture. [00:07:30] Justin sees opportunities to combine CHAOSS metrics with secure supply chain efforts, aiming to aid developers in making informed decisions about dependencies and warning them of potential risks. [00:09:11] Dawn asks about the challenges of scaling metrics and managing the vast number of dependencies. Justin responds by describing an experience focused on aiding developers at the start of a project, helping them make data-informed choices about a few key dependencies. [00:12:51] Emma adds that from the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) perspective, having a dashboard to direct inquiries is very helpful. James mentions that the dashboard also provides an easy way to surface security guidance. [00:13:27] The conversation shifts to Dawn asking about the business aspect of open source within Microsoft and how they measure this impact. James responds that open source is integral to Microsoft's software development approach, aiming to build an internal community and avoid duplicating solutions. He also discusses the importance of Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) for security and supply chain transparency. [00:16:00] Emma elaborates on the internal value of external open source contributions, sharing how they help maintainers demonstrate the business impact during reviews. [00:17:14] Dawn inquiries about the future direction for Microsoft regarding metrics and measurement. Justin touches on exploring the area of funding, aiming to improve conversations about financial contributions to open source projects and achieving better return on investment. [00:19:10] James mentions that their package selection work for developers has been inspired by CHAOSS metrics, suggesting that these insights be shared in OSPO working group meetings. Value Adds (Picks) of the week: [00:19:34] Dawn's pick is getting her permanent residency approval allowing her to live in the UK without any restrictions. [00:19:59] Emma's pick is taking a break over the holidays and being outside as much as possible. [00:20:33] Justin's pick is a book he enjoyed reading called, Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography. [00:21:19] James's pick is reconnecting with art and music as an avenue for self-expression. *Panelist: * Dawn Foster Guests: Emma Irwin Justin Gosses James Siri Links: CHAOSS (https://chaoss.community/) CHAOSS Project X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/chaossproj?lang=en) CHAOSScast Podcast (https://podcast.chaoss.community/) podcast@chaoss.community (mailto:podcast@chaoss.community) Georg Link Website (https://georg.link/) Dawn Foster X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/geekygirldawn?lang=en) Emma Irwin LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmamirwin/) James Siri LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-siri/) James Gosses LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justingosses/) Justin Gosses Website (https://justingosses.com/) OSS Project Viability: Compliance + Security (https://chaoss.community/kb/metrics-model-oss-project-viability-compliance-security/) Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography by Vlad Tarko (https://books.google.com/books/about/Elinor_Ostrom.html?id=01TysgEACAAJ) Special Guests: Emma Irwin, James Siri, and Justin Gosses.

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, he interviews Bobbi Herzberg on a polycentric approach to solving climate change. Bobbi and Jordan discuss the importance and meaning of "polycentricity", how we can vote with our feet, major themes from public choice, Elinor Ostrom's work on climate change, and the six advantages that polycentric systems have for coping with climate change: (1) competition among decision makers, (2) cooperation among decision makers, (3) perceptions of legitimacy that lead to coproduction, (4) mutual learning through experimentation, (5) institutional resilience/robustness, and (6) emergent outcomes that are socially desirable but not centrally planned.Bobbi Herzberg is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research Fellow. Previously, she served as assistant director of individual freedom & free markets at the John Templeton Foundation, as administrative director of The Institute of Political Economy, and as president of the Public Choice Society from 2014-2016.Check out Jordan Lofthouse's work.Referenced Works: Jordan and Bobbi's "The Continuing Case for a Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change", Elinor Ostrom's "A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change"If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Alex speaks with Jayme Lemke about the life, work, and legacy of American Nobel Prize-winning political economist Elinor Ostrom.

Alex speaks with Stefanie Haeffele about her recent book Living Better Together, which explores the work of Elinor Ostrom and Viviana Zelizer.  Episode Notes: "Living Better Together" by Stefanie Haeffele and Virgil Henry Storr: https://a.co/d/hJNCxw6  Viviana Zelizer's homepage at Princeton: https://sociology.princeton.edu/people/viviana-zelizer  Elinor Ostrom's bio and short autobiography on the Nobel website: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/facts/  Nonneutrality of Money in a Social Perspective by Julia Włodarczyk https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274184545_Nonneutrality_of_Money_in_a_Social_Perspective  Zelizer's "Circuits of Commerce" https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520241367.003.0009 Ostrom's "Governing The Commons" https://a.co/d/gcUDVWq  Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy by Viviana A. Zelizer https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139364/economic-lives  "Testing Circuits of Commerce in the Distant Past: Archaeological Understandings of Social Relationships and Economic Lives" by: Crystal A. Dozier https://www.springerprofessional.de/testing-circuits-of-commerce-in-the-distant-past-archaeological-/23930708   

https://youtu.be/9h0iidPzMXE Everyone's heard of the infamous "Tragedy of the Commons," but the real tragedy is that Elinor Ostrom's work refuting it isn't similarly popular. -Links for the Curious- “Aristotle, Politics, Book 2.” n.d. Accessed August 8, 2023. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:2. Big Think, dir. 2012. *Ending The Tragedy of The Commons | Elinor Ostrom | Big Think*. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5Q3VvpI7w. Carson, Kevin. n.d. “Governance, Agency and Autonomy: Anarchist Themes in the Work of Elinor Ostrom.” “Commons and Contradictions: The Political Ecology of Elinor Ostrom - Undisciplined Environments.” 2017. September 20, 2017. https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2017/09/20/commons-and-contradictions-the-political-ecology-of-elinor-ostrom/. Dietz, Thomas, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C Stern. 2003. “The Struggle to Govern the Commons” 302. “‘Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives Beyond Markets and States' by Derek Wall Reviewed by John Barry.” n.d. Accessed August 4, 2023. https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/16044_elinor-ostroms-rules-for-radicals-cooperative-alternatives-beyond-markets-and-states-by-derek-wall-reviewed-by-john-barry/. Frischmann, Brett M., Alain Marciano, and Giovanni Battista Ramello. 2019. “Retrospectives: Tragedy of the Commons after 50 Years.” *Journal of Economic Perspectives* 33 (4): 211–28. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.33.4.211. Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons: The Population Problem Has No Technical Solution; It Requires a Fundamental Extension in Morality.” *Science* 162 (3859): 1243–48. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. Laerhoven, Frank van, and Elinor Ostrom. n.d. “Traditions and Trends in the Study of the Commons.” Ostrom, Elinor. 2012. “Green from the Grassroots | by Elinor Ostrom.” Project Syndicate. June 12, 2012. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/green-from-the-grassroots-2012-06. ———. 2015. *Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action*. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316423936. Ostrom, Elinor, Joanna Burger, Christopher B. Field, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Policansky. 1999. “Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges.” *Science, New Series* 284 (5412): 278–82. Sustainable Development and the Tragedy of Commons - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByXM47Ri1Kc. Elinor Ostrom on Resilient Social-Ecological Systems - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqC7xG8fxHw. Velicu, Irina, and Gustavo García-López. 2018. “Thinking the Commons through Ostrom and Butler: Boundedness and Vulnerability.” *Theory, Culture & Society* 35 (6): 55–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418757315. Icons for Principles of the Commons from The Noun Project: https://thenounproject.com/icon/puzzle-5278809/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/monitoring-2906106/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/russian-nesting-dolls-2671768/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/pillory-4509440/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/boundary-3856835/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/arbitration-1142571/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/revise-1085288/ https://thenounproject.com/icon/raised-fist-4914991/ Trap music from Freesound: https://freesound.org/people/Inespy/sounds/514311/

Dr. Jayme Lemke, Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, and host Rosemarie Fike discuss Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom and why community is best served and best empowered through grassroots movements that enable solutions tailored to their specific needs.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Michael speaks with Lance Robinson, a Research Scientist studying Human Dimensions of Sustainable Resource Development at the Center for Northern Forest Ecosystem Research in Ontario, Canada. Lance has studied rangelands as social-ecological systems for many years, and has contributed to an alternative way of viewing them that departs from some of the traditional assumptions about commons and governance. In this conversation, Michael and Lance make specific reference to the design principles for community-based resource management developed by Elinor Ostrom in her famous book, Governing the Commons. Much of the conversation has to do with Ostrom's first principle, which stipulated that communities are aided by boundaries that delineate who is and who isn't a community member, and where the community's resources are. Lance's work unpacks the importance of boundaries in part through what he calls a complex landscape mosaic, which reflects the fact that in real systems, particularly in rangelands, there are many overlapping and shifting boundaries that are designed to help resource users adapt to resource scarcity, not to prevent the overuse of the commons, which is how they are usually interpreted. This conversation builds on a previous interview with Mark Moritz on pastoralists and open property, and you should check that interview out as well if this one interests you.   References: https://landscapewanderer.link/ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lance-Robinson Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press. Schlager, Edella, and Elinor Ostrom. 1992. “Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis.” Land Economics 68 (3): 249–62. Robinson, Lance W., and Fikret Berkes. 2010. “Applying Resilience Thinking to Questions of Policy for Pastoralist Systems: Lessons from the Gabra of Northern Kenya.” Human Ecology 38 (3): 335–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-010-9327-1. Robinson, Lance W. 2019. “Open Property and Complex Mosaics: Variants in Tenure Regimes across Pastoralist Social-Ecological Systems” 13 (1): 804.

If God calls us to seek the common good of our communities—what does that mean in real life? The commons, a shared community place or resource, is a critical idea in this conversation. Even better: it's not just an idea; it's been practiced around the globe in many times and places. David Frank talks with friend and fellow housemate Brendan Johnson about the ways we could start thinking differently—really differently—about our public, private, and shared resources. Our goal is to inspire you to imagine new ways of flourishing and to open the conversation further. Shoot us a message with any comments, questions, or critiques. There's so much around this topic left to discuss! __________ Timestamps (1:21) What is “the commons”? (5:47) Commons vs., say, a public park (14:24) Seeking the common good in common life (18:59) Rights to common air, water vs. privatization (24:50) Who are “the commoners”? (30:22) Example of 3M and the (failure of) water commons (35:53) The tragedy of the commons (39:17) “Beating the bounds” (42:47) Healthcare and the mental commons (45:23) Joy and the desire to contribute (50:15) What it means to be human (53:06) The commons of communion (57:23) What we can do now __________ Links and References Our Guest Today is D. Brendan Johnson: https://linktr.ee/dbrendanjohnson "A Short History of Enclosure in Britain" by Simon Fairlie (The Land, 2009; link to publisher) Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher (1973, link to publisher) Christ and the Common Life by Luke Bretherton (2019, link to publisher) “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin (Science, 1968; link to JStor) Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom (1990, link to publisher) Podcast: "Frontiers of Commoning with David Bollier" https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/ Free, Fair, and Alive by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich https://freefairandalive.org/ Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi https://cooperationjackson.org/ Mondragon Corporation in Spain https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/ __________ If you like this podcast, please consider… →Sharing feedback or questions! www.podpage.com/communion-shalom/contact →Supporting us on Patreon! patreon.com/communionandshalom →Following us on Instagram! @communionandshalom — Credits Creators and Hosts: David Frank, TJ Espinoza Audio Engineer: Carl Swenson (www.carlswensonmusic.com) Podcast Manager: Elena

In this episode, Michael speaks with with Shauna Mahajan, lead social scientist with the global science team of the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF.  During their conversation, Shauna shares her thoughts about her educational experiences and her time at WWF, during which she has focused on helping conservation projects become more inclusive and holistic. Shauna has done this in part by developing decision support tools, including a tool called Elinor, so named in honor of Elinor Ostrom. This tool helps researchers and practitioners, in the language of the Elinor website, “track attributes critical to the success of area-based conservation over time, and share this information with decision makers and conservation supporters”.  Shauna also discusses her experiences on the ground to support inclusive and holistic conservation, and a new program at WWF that is encouraging the career development of underrepresented groups at the organization.   Shauna's website: https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/shauna-mahajan References Deveson, A. (2005). Resilience (First Edition). Roundhouse Publishing Group. Mahajan, S. L., Estradivari, E., Ojwang, L., & Ahmadia, G. N. (2022). The good, the bad, and the ugly: reflections on co-designing science for impact between the Global South and Global North. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal Du Conseil. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsac115 Mahajan, S. L., Glew, L., Rieder, E., Ahmadia, G., Darling, E., Fox, H. E., Mascia, M. B., & McKinnon, M. (2019). Systems thinking for planning and evaluating conservation interventions. Conservation Science and Practice, 1(7), e44. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.44 https://elinordata.org/ https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/the-art-and-craft-of-systems-change

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we continue our three-part miniseries on Civil Society, hosted by Mikayla Novak who explores civil society, encompassing the practical nature of voluntary mutual assistance outside but entangled with the domains of market and state, the theoretical dimensions of civil society, and the intersection of classical liberalism and civil society.Joining Novak for this episode is Lenore Ealy, vice-rector internacional at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, discussing the history of philanthropy and social design. Ealy begins by describing her work with Richard Cornuelle, sparking Ealy's early interest in understanding philanthropy, the history of civil society, and liberal individualism. She examines the role of government involvement in nonprofit organizations, learned helplessness, and the problems afflicting philanthropy. She elaborates on our inability to successfully construct an organized social design, referring to the work of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. Novak and Ealy also discuss ideas of self-scoring poverty, whether humans have a natural desire for freedom, and the meaning of “civil society.”Lenore Ealy is vice-rector internacional at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, founding president of The Philanthropic Enterprise, and co-editor of numerous books including the book series, Polycentricity: Studies in Institutional Diversity and Voluntary Governance. Ealy holds a PhD in the history of moral and political thought from John Hopkins University.If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season one on digital democracy.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Ariane König shares her work on studying complex systems, as well as practical advice for creating a regenerative society. She dives deep into defining what a system is in complex social-ecological-technological systems and stresses the significance of collective intelligence and transdisciplinary approaches in her research. Ariane discusses the work of political economist Elinor Ostrom on social coordination and the mechanisms that govern it, with examples of how market competition and government regulation fail, particularly in the case of common goods that are limited in their supplies. The conversation then looks at how to create a regenerative society, which involves both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Ariane highlights the need for local action and engaging in activities that can help regenerate the ecosystem, be it in an urban or rural setting. Ariane König is an assistant professor at the University of Luxembourg leading a team on social ecological systems research. https://www.citizenscience.lu/ transformation-lab.luThis episode of SystemShift comes from Greenpeace Nordic and is hosted by Greenpeace Sweden campaigner, Carl Schlyter, and produced by Alexia Fridén, with additional support from Ariadna Rodrigo, Juliana Costa, Christian Aslund and Attila Kulcsár. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the show, Western Landowners Alliance's Programs Director Hallie Mahowald had the pleasure of talking to a good friend, Aaron Derwingson. Derwingson is the water projects director for the Nature Conservancy's Colorado River program. He and Hallie both live in Salida, Colorado. Derwingson has piloted water banking and other tools for flexible water management, conducted field research on the impacts of reduced irrigation, evaluated alternative low water use crops, and upgraded irrigation systems to help improve river flows. Before joining The Nature Conservancy, Aaron served as the Stewardship Director for the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust. They discussed the current situation on the Colorado River, some of the many ways that landowners, in partnership with organizations like TNC, are making their water go farther and do more, and the role of water markets in creating the flexibility in the river system that is needed. You can find links to references from the conversation, as well as a complete transcript of this episode, at onland.westernlandowners.org. Topics discussed [00:01:30] Shortage challenges in the Colorado River Basin [00:02:19] Doing more with less water [00:04:50] Examples of solutions for making our water go farther [00:05:56] Maybell irrigation District diversion improvements [00:08:31] Minute 323 water for the environment [00:09:59] Role of water markets [00:11:38] All water is local [00:12:20] Power, rural communities and water [00:13:30] Federal funding and the big opportunity right now [00:14:56] Role of the states in water funding [00:16:38] Are our institutions nimble enough for the water crisis [00:18:09] How water rights holders can be involved in solutions [00:19:00] Auto Tarp and appropriate technology [00:20:11] Low-tech restoration [00:20:57] Compensation for leaving water instream [00:21:46] Markets for flexibility and public benefit [00:22:58] Creative water sharing agreements [00:24:41] Integrate the social with the technical [00:27:07] The urgency of the Colorado River crisis keeps him up at night [00:28:25] Elinor Ostrom and the tragedy of the commons [00:29:37] We need landowners to solve this crisis

How might the commons paradigm be applied to cities in a more focused, effective way? Professors Sheila R. Foster of Georgetown University and Christian Iaione of Luiss Carli University in Rome, share their insights into this topic after years of study and collaborative experimentation. Their new book, 'Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities,' describes lessons from Elinor Ostrom's research, the six distinct phases of the "co-cities protocol," and the work of the interdisciplinary research clinic LabGov, among other things. More about the commons at Bollier.org. A PDF transcript of this episode can be found here: https://www.bollier.org/files/misc-file-upload/files/Foster__Iaione_Episode_37_transcript.pdf

I describe how the Gal Oya irrigation system got better. It's an example that might inspire hope. I also imagine how a software codebase and its team might have a similar improvement.As with earlier episodes, I'm leaning on Elinor Ostrom's 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman's 2021 book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action. I also mention James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State, which I discuss starting with episode 17.More about Gal Oya and similar projectsUphoff, N.T. "People's Participation in Water Management: Gal Oya, Sri Lanka". In Public Participation in Development Planning and Management: Cases from Africa and Asia, ed. J.C. Garcia-Samor, 1985Perera, J. "The Gal Oya Farmer Organization Programme: A Learning Process?" In Participatory Management in Sri Lanka's Irrigation Schemes, 1986.Korten, D. "Community Organization and Rural Development:  a Learning Process Approach", Public Administration on Review 40, 1980 (Philippines, Bangladesh)Korten, F. "Building National Capacity to Develop Water Users' Associations: Experience from the Philippines, World Bank working paper 528, 1982Rahman, A. "Some Dimensions of People's Participation in the Bloomni Sena Movement", United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1981 (Nepal)Rabibhadena, A. The Transformation of Tambon Yokkrabat, Changwat Samut Sakorn, Thammasat University, 1980 (Thailand). Refactoring books I have likedMartin Fowler, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999William C. Wake, Refactoring Workbook, 2003Joshua Kerievsky, Refactoring to Patterns, 2004Scott W. Ambler and Pramod J. Sadalage, Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design, 2006The Strangler Fig patternFowler's original blog postA case study I commissioned, way back when. Credits "Agriculture in Extreme Environments - Irrigation channel for wheat fields and date palms" by Richard Allaway is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A short episode that encourages members of software teams to give Elinor Ostrom's ideas a try, in two ways:1. I'm arranging for Elinor Ostrom's intellectual heirs to provide support.2. Your situation is not worse than those of Sri Lankan farmers in the Gal Oya irrigation system. A commons-style approach helped them, so why couldn't it help you?I'm looking for teams who want to collaborate with Indiana University's Ostrom Workshop, and I intend to provide financing.

Ostrom's core principles for the design of successful commons: how to monitor compliance with rules, how to punish non-compliance, how to resolve disputes, and how to participate in making rules. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, 1990Erik Nordman, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action, 2021"The dirty little secret of contract law" Image of lobster buoys from Flickr user Raging Wire, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

This is the first of two or three episodes that draw on Elinor Ostrom's 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman's 2021 book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action. What I hope is that those lessons apply to the problem of keeping codebases from devolving into unworkable piles of crap. Ostrom has nine design principles for designing successful commons governance. I mention them all in this episode, and provide Ostrom's summary below. In the descriptions, "CPR" stands for "Common Pool Resource" (that is, a commons). "Appropriation rules" govern extracting "resource units" from the commons. "Provision rules" govern improvement and maintenance of the commons. I've replaced some of the bolded summaries with my own when Ostrom's had too much jargon.Clearly defined boundaries: Individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.The rules governing a CPR are strongly influenced by local context: Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology, and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provision rules requiring labor, material, and money.Those affected by rules make them: Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.  Monitoring: Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behavior, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators.Graduated sanctions: Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.Conflict-resolution mechanisms: Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.Minimal recognition of the right to organize: The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.For CPRs that are parts of larger systems:Nested enterprises: Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.--------In the podcast, I said "There will always be pressure to deliver faster. There's been a lot written on reducing that pressure, or resisting it. That's off topic for these episodes, so I'll put links in the show notes." Well, I thought there were, but I don't have anything to offer you yet.Here's a comment from Sasha Cuerda: "a tactic I have used in the past is ADRs. Basically keep receipts documenting the trade off being made. When my team had a track record of correctly and proactively assessing and documenting risk and those documents kept surfacing in retros tied to those risks materializing, we gained credibility with the non-manager stakeholders impacted by incidents and were able to push back. But def a long game."it helped that we had an already established and blessed practice of using ADRs in other contexts. They weren't initially seen as “resistance” but as part of established good practice."I did remember a blog post I wrote long ago, warning new agile teams not to deliver too much value too soon before they know how to do it sustainably. "I find myself advising new Agile teams to go slower than they could. Here's the thing: at the beginning, they're probably working on a bad code base, and they have yet to learn important rules and habits. They will find it easy to go faster than is compatible with making the code more malleable. [...]"But that's not really the same problem. --------Image of grazing cattle due to Emilian Robert Vicol is licensed under CC BY 2.0 and was obtained from OpenUniverse.org.

It's easy to tell ourselves we're living in the world we want – one where Darwinian evolution drives competing technology platforms and capitalism pushes nations to maximize GDP regardless of externalities like carbon emissions. It can feel like evolution and competition are all there is.If that's a complete description of what's driving the world and our collective destiny, that can feel pretty hopeless. But what if that's not the whole story of evolution? This is where evolutionary theorist, author, and professor David Sloan Wilson comes in. He has documented where an enlightened game, one of cooperation, rather than competition, is possible. His work shows that humans can and have chosen values like cooperation, altruism and group success – versus individual competition and selfishness – at key moments in our evolution, proving that evolution isn't just genetic. It's cultural, and it's a choice. In a world where our trajectory isn't tracking in the direction we want, it's time to slow down and ask: is a different kind of conscious evolution possible? On Your Undivided Attention, we're going to update the Darwinian principles of evolution using a critical scientific lens that can help upgrade our ability to cooperate – ranging from the small community-level, all the way to entire technology companies that can cooperate in ways that allow everyone to succeed. RECOMMENDED MEDIAThis View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution by David Sloan WilsonProsocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups by David Sloan WilsonAtlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III by David Sloan WilsonGoverning the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor OstromHit Refresh by Satya NadellaWTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'ReillyHard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace & Jim Erickson RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns with Mara Zepeda & Kate “Sassy” SassoonA Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

We have done three inbetweenisodes so far on healthcare stakeholder collaboration. In sum, there are two major issues that patients have with our healthcare industry, and both can only be solved for if healthcare stakeholder collaboration happens: Patients falling into care gaps and winding up with bad downstream consequences Patients not being able to afford their care This show, we are moving on to talk about an actionable solution here to the care gap problem—the very ubiquitous issue of patients with some pretty serious health issues who remain either undiagnosed or not on optimal treatment or follow-up. Our team at Aventria Health has a big success story that I would love to share relative to care gaps and how to think about solving for them at the local, regional, and national level. Spoiler alert here: What we're talking about in this healthcare podcast, which we call our Groundswell Solution™, improved the usage of best-practice clinical guidelines for patients with end-stage liver disease by 23% nationally. Also keep in mind that what is fast becoming a major factor in developing liver disease is obesity, and the incidence of liver disease is growing. As aforementioned, we are talking about an Aventria Health Group Groundswell Solution, which is the idea of getting diverse stakeholders who are enthusiastic to be empowered as part of a team to help solve for gaps in care and really improve patient outcomes. It definitely takes a village, and if we can find ways where different organizations can work together to contribute and leverage strengths along shared priorities, then great things can really happen. Before we kick in to the show here, let me bring up the miracle of the commons. This is cool. This was a term that was coined by Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom, by the way, won the Nobel Prize for this work. She saw how humans have such an amazing capacity to work together through what she called design principles and come up with some really unique and inspiring solutions that benefit everybody. You can connect with Stacey and Dave on LinkedIn. If you are interested in contributing to Groundswell, please complete this short questionnaire.  Dave and Stacey are co-presidents of Aventria Health Group, a consultancy working with clients who endeavor to form collaborations with payers, providers, Pharma, employer organizations, or patient advocacy groups. They are also co-presidents of QC-Health, a benefit corporation finding cost-effective ways to improve the health of Americans. Each week on Relentless Health Value, Stacey uses her voice and thought leadership to provide insights for healthcare industry decision makers trying to do the right thing. Each show features expert guests who break down the twists and tricks in the medical field to help improve outcomes and lower costs across the care continuum. Relentless Health Value is a top 100 podcast on iTunes in the medicine category and reaches tens of thousands of engaged listeners across the healthcare industry. Dave is a 30-year veteran helping clients work at the intersection of payers, providers, pharmacy, Pharma, and medical device companies. He is an accomplished strategist, providing innovative customer marketing, access, quality, and health intervention solutions for large clients and has directed the development of numerous industry-leading campaigns in primary care and specialty markets. Dave has helped dozens of clients achieve top rankings in their respective categories. He is also an active member of the Pharmacy Quality Alliance.   03:03 How can areas of improvement be flagged in such a fragmented patient care journey? 04:06 What is “the miracle of the commons”? 04:54 How is the miracle of the commons being used at Aventria and QC-Health? 07:51 What is Groundswell, and how does it utilize the miracle of the commons? 11:13 “Is the answer, then, to drive more knowledge and more awareness?”—Dave 11:35 “What about using technology to provide curated, highly targeted information that can support them at the point of care?”—Dave 13:25 “You want to identify where these gaps are across the full spectrum of the journey.”—Dave 15:08 “This is something that is not commonly happening on its own.”—Dave 16:40 “Done in the right way, people are excited … to improve care and improve outcomes.”—Dave 18:50 “Our aim is really to meet people and teams where they are.”—Stacey 19:35 “You don't have to know how or why or where—merely that I think this outcome is not what it could be. That's the place to start.”—Dave 20:01 “You have to understand the different goals of the different stakeholders.”—Dave 21:14 “If we can do the right things the right way, then we can serve many masters.”—Dave   You can connect with Stacey and Dave on LinkedIn. If you are interested in contributing to Groundswell, please complete this short questionnaire.    Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast How can areas of improvement be flagged in such a fragmented patient care journey? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast What is “the miracle of the commons”? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast How is the miracle of the commons being used at Aventria and QC-Health? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast What is Groundswell, and how does it utilize the miracle of the commons? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Is the answer, then, to drive more knowledge and more awareness?” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “What about using technology to provide curated, highly targeted information that can support them at the point of care?” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You want to identify where these gaps are across the full spectrum of the journey.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “This is something that is not commonly happening on its own.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Done in the right way, people are excited … to improve care and improve outcomes.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Our aim is really to meet people and teams where they are.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You don't have to know how or why or where—merely that I think this outcome is not what it could be. That's the place to start.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You have to understand the different goals of the different stakeholders.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “If we can do the right things the right way, then we can serve many masters.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast   Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Merrill Goozner, Betsy Seals (EP387), Stacey Richter (INBW36), Dr Eric Bricker (Encore! EP351), Al Lewis, Dan Mendelson, Wendell Potter, Nick Stefanizzi, Brian Klepper (Encore! EP335), Dr Aaron Mitchell (EP382), Karen Root, Mark Miller, AJ Loiacono, Josh LaRosa, Stacey Richter (INBW35), Rebecca Etz (Encore! EP295), Olivia Webb (Encore! EP337), Mike Baldzicki, Lisa Bari, Betsy Seals (EP375), Dave Chase, Cora Opsahl (EP373), Cora Opsahl (EP372), Dr Mark Fendrick (Encore! EP308), Erik Davis and Autumn Yongchu (EP371), Erik Davis and Autumn Yongchu (EP370), Keith Hartman, Dr Aaron Mitchell (Encore! EP282)    

David Sloan Wilson is one of biology's most prolific and impactful scientists. He is author of paradigmatic contributions to evolutionary theory and how organisms behave, such as multilevel selection and core design principles for the efficacy of groups. But the reach of his work is far beyond the domains of biology and sociology, in whole a toolkit for improving how we live together and weaving between areas of thought. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Atlas Hugged (06:30)Sociobiology by EO Wilson (12:00)Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Steven C Hayes (21:00)Science proceeds by seeing really good reasons for not believing the current model for reality Lindon Eaves (25:40)Elinor Ostrom (26:15)EO Wilson (26:15)Elliott Sober (27:00)Ostrom design principles for governing the commons (31:00)The Tragedy of the Commons [Hardin, 1968]  (34:20)The Neighborhood Project by Sloan Wilson (41:30)Richard A Kauffman (David's graduate student)Core competencies of prosociality (48:50)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (49:10)The knowledge commons (51:00)The Noosphere and Pierre Teilhard de ChardinLynn Margulis (53:50)Dual inheritance theory (55:00)Lightning round (01:01:00):Book: Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and The Secret of our Successand The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph HenrichPassion: being stewards of the natural worldHeart sing: stewarding prosocialityFind David online:Website: https://davidsloanwilson.world/Twitter: @David_S_WilsonProsocial Commons: https://thisviewoflife.com/introducing-the-prosocial-commons/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series  David's playlist

IJC#10: Picking a bone with Elinor Ostrom? A conversation with Landon Yoder & Courtney Hammond Wagner Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Landon Yoder and Courtney Hammond Wagner. Together with Kira Sullivan-Wiley and Gemma Smith, Landon and Courtney co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory, an article that reflects on how to apply Ostrom's design principles to larger-scale and more complex cases than the commons cases that we typically read about. Their proposition is that there is an over-emphasis on using Ostrom's design principles diagnostically. They argue that as the environmental challenges that we face today differ from the ones that the design principles were arguably developed for, we need more attention for building theoretical understanding of how collective action can contribute to solving larger-scale challenges where many problems intersect.   Landon is affiliated with the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University, Bloomington. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Geography from that same university. His work combines both social and natural science data and spatial analysis to examine how biophysical conditions, social dynamics, and institutional arrangements jointly influence environmental change. Courtney received a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont, and worked as a postdoctoral scholar in sustainable groundwater at Stanford. She now works for the United States  Department of Agriculture (USDA). Courtney's research broadly aims to understand how we design incentives, rules and policies to collectively change behavior in water resource dilemmas to improve community well-being and ecological outcomes. In case you want to learn more about topics akin to the topic discussed in this episode, may we suggest you check out some of the other titles in the International Journal of the Commons that also look at, for example: Orazgaliyev, S., & Araral, E. (2019). Conflict and cooperation in global commons: Theory and evidence from the Caspian Sea. International Journal of the Commons, 13(2). Paavola, J. (2008). Governing atmospheric sinks: the architecture of entitlements in the global commons. International Journal of the Commons, 2(2). Stern, P. (2011). Design principles for global commons: Natural resources and emerging technologies. International Journal of the Commons, 5(2). And of course, you should check out the special issue introducing the Social-ecological systems meta-analysis database (SESMAD) project, put together by Michael Cox. This project is guided by the following research question: can the variables found to be important in explaining outcomes on small-scale systems be scaled up to explain outcomes in large-scale environmental governance?

Alex speaks with Jayme Lemke about the life, work, and legacy of American Nobel Prize-winning political economist Elinor Ostrom. 

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we revisit a conversation from the Hayek Program Podcast with Peter Boettke & Bobbi Herzberg as they recount their histories with Elinor Ostrom. They explore Herzberg's time learning from and working with the Ostroms. Herzberg explains how the Ostroms shaped her conception of political economy and demonstrated to her how to be intellectually curious and a lifelong learner. Herzberg also recounts her time as department chair, including the lessons she learned in balancing research and leadership in academia.If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review for us on Apple Podcasts and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever else you get your podcasts.Do you have a question related to the podcast or maybe a show topic you'd like to suggest? Write to us at hayekprogram@mercatus.gmu.edu with your questions and suggestions.Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramLearn more about Academic & Student ProgramsFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium

Building on the previous episode, this one continues to discuss the work of Bayard Rustin and the overlapping struggles that shaped his vision of democracy and his approach to organizing. I do so with Harry Boyte.  We focus on Rustin's practice as an organizer, his conception of nonviolence as a form of democratic politics, and how to understand Rustin's classic 1964 essay “From Protest to Politics,” as well as what Rustin has to teach us today. Along the way, Harry tells dramatic stories about his own work as an organizer and unfolds why Rustin's approach shows how distinctions between left and right or conservative and progressive are useless for thinking politically. Harry reflects on how all communities have democratic and authoritarian impulses. For him, the work of organizing is to identify and build up the capacity of the former and counter the work of conflict entrepreneurs who play on the latter.GuestHarry C. Boyte is a public intellectual, organizer, and theorist of the public work framework of civic engagement and participatory democracy. He worked as a young man for Martin Luther King's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reporting to Dorothy Cotton, director of the movement's 900 grassroots citizenship schools. From 1966 to 1972, following the suggestion of King, he organized poor white mill workers in Durham, North Carolina who built a community organization, ACT, which made connections with poor blacks in Durham. He was a co-founder of the New American Movement, a precursor to Bernie Sanders' Democratic Socialists of America, before he shifted to a democratic populist philosophy in the late 1970s. Boyte is now Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy at Augsburg, a Senior Associate of the Kettering Foundation, a cofounder of the Institute for Public Life and Work, and on the Scholars Council of Braver Angels.Asked by the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute in 1987 to organize a project on democracy, he translated what he called the “citizen politics” he had generalized from the organizing of the Industrial Areas Foundation into a variety of projects to democratize institutions, from schools and colleges to government agencies and nonprofits. In 1990, working with Dorothy Cotton and Jim Scheibel, he founded Public Achievement (PA) a youth political and civic education initiative based on community organizing practices and a larger view of democracy which has spread to more than 20 countries.From 1993 to 1995, Boyte coordinated Reinventing Citizenship, a cross partisan alliance of educational, civic, and philanthropic civic groups, which worked with President Clinton's White House Domestic Policy Council to analyze the gap between citizens and government and to advance the idea of “public work,” akin to what Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom later theorized as “polycentric governance” as an alternative to simple regulation or service delivery. In 2012-2013, on the invitation of Obama's White House Office of Public Engagement, he coordinated the American Commonwealth Partnership, a confederation of higher education and civic groups formed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act establishing land grant colleges.Harry Boyte has authored, coauthored, and edited eleven books on democracy, citizenship, and community organizing, including The Backyard Revolution (1980), Free Spaces with Sara Evans (1986, 1992); CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (1989) and Awakening Democracy (2018). His writings have appeared in more than 100 publications including New York Times, Political Theory, Chronicle of Higher Education, Public Administration Review, and Education Week.Resources for Going DeeperSee the show notes for the previous episode.

In this conversation I talk with one of the leading evolutionary biologists, Dr. David Sloan Wilson. Dr. Wilson's work has focused on the important of groups in evolution and how that relates to human societies and religion. We talk about the origin of religion from an evolutionary perspective and discuss whether this undermines religious belief or whether it can strengthen it. We mention Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Charles Darwin, Bret Weinstein, EO Wilson, Emile Durkheim, Terrence Deacon, Richard Sosis, Eric Hobsbawn, Terence Ranger, Elinor Ostrom and more. Dr. David Sloan Wilson: https://evolution-institute.org/profile/david-sloan-wilson/ Prosocial World: https://www.prosocial.world/the-science Darwin's Cathedral: https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Cathedral-Evolution-Religion-Society/dp/0226901351/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=darwin%27s+cathedral&qid=1654269676&s=books&sprefix=darwin%27s+cathde%2Cstripbooks%2C108&sr=1-1

Dr. Elinor Ostrom was one of the greatest environmental optimists of our time.She won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for work on "Analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", making her the first woman to win the prestigious award in economics.In this podcast, Priyal D'almeida and Ritul Gaur talk about her work on governance of commons, the 8 core design principles that she derived from her extensive travel and study of thriving communities, and their implication in the Indian context. Suggested readings: Marginal revolution video Remembering Elinor Ostrom - IUCN Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor OstromFollow Priyal on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/lynciapriyalFollow Ritul on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaurritulCheck out Takshashila's courses: https://school.takshashila.org.in/You can listen to this show and other incredible shows on the new and improved IVM Podcast App on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/iosYou can check out our website at https://www.ivmpodcasts.com

Author, academic, and podcaster David Bollier! David works with the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and has studied and written extensively on commoning for the last two decades. For those who aren't familiar with that word, commoning is simply the act of managing shared resources like land or information. We talk about how he came to study the commons as an alternative for change after being disillusioned with the political system, can't say it's gotten any better, starting from where you are, however small, and examples of commoning in our everyday life that we simply don't have words for, and often overlook. You can find his writing, books, and podcast on his website. Mentioned in the show... Think Like a Commoner (book) Frontiers of Commoning (podcast) Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles of Managing a Commons My two favorite episodes of FoC... Treating Food as Commons, Not Commodity Why Ivan Illich Still Matters Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Certified Naturally Grown & Growing for Market Magazine. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know who/what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

The “tragedy of the commons” is an idea that has so thoroughly seeped into culture and law that it seems normal for people and corporations to own land, water, and even whole ecosystems. But there's a BIG problem: the “tragedy” part of it has been debunked – it really should be the triumph of the commons. Learn the origin story of privatization and explore the true meaning of commons and how to manage them for sustainability and equity. Also check out our suggestions for championing the commons (beyond Robin Hood's strategy of stabbing the aristocracy). For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show (https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/)

A new collaborative design methodology is emerging. Prosocial can transform a collection of self-interested individuals into a harmonious and effective group. And it helps groups work with other groups, exponentially scaling positive change. This episode is a deep inquiry into the nuances of human behavior and cooperation. We'll explore the foundational science and core design principles with the founder of Prosocial World, Dr. Paul Atkins. Our journey also takes us to Sierra Leone to speak with Hannah Bockarie and Beate Ebert about their experience with Prosocial during the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

Prosocial Spirituality training is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Dr. Elinor Ostrom and Br. Wayne Teasdale's interspiritual vision. It promotes greater harmony, collaboration, and equity within and among groups, as well as cultivating spiritual depth and maturity in the individuals who make up those groups. Prosocial Spirituality, co-developed by Contemplative Life and Prosocial World, integrates evolutionary scientific concepts with universal spiritual practices to assist formal and informal groups of all sizes gain the tools they need to flourish and contribute in these difficult times.

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Erik Nordman, professor of natural resources management and adjunct professor of economics at Grand Valley State University, and affiliate scholar at Indiana University's Ostrom Workshop. Nordman discusses his new book, “The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action,” which introduces Ostrom's Nobel Prize–winning economic concepts to a broader audience. Nordman discusses his inspiration behind writing the book, how locally tailored solutions are essential to resource management today, and Ostrom's research legacy in establishing the Bloomington School of Political Economy. References and recommendations: “The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action” by Erik Nordman; https://islandpress.org/books/uncommon-knowledge-elinor-ostrom “The Cambridge Handbook of Commons Research Innovations” edited by Sheila R. Foster and Chrystie F. Swiney; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-commons-research-innovations/0C89E27A710207DC008C7A2F9AD55F79 “Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School: Building a New Approach to Policy and the Social Sciences” edited by Jayme Lemke and Vlad Tarko; https://ppe.mercatus.org/publications/elinor-ostrom-and-bloomington-school “Fixing Niagara Falls: Environment, Energy, and Engineers at the World's Most Famous Waterfall” by Daniel MacFarlane; https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/F/bo70337053.html “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future” by Elizabeth Kolbert; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617060/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert/ “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert; https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062185/thesixthextinction “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change” by Elizabeth Kolbert; https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/field-notes-from-a-catastrophe-9781620409886/

Capital is no longer a scarce resource. Attention is. Albert Wenger joins Vasant Dhar in episode 29 of Brave New World to discuss how the Industrial Age is past its expiry date, and what we need to do to prepare for the Knowledge Age.   Useful resources: 1. Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures and Continuations. And on Twitter. 2. The World After Capital -- Albert Wenger. 3. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy -- Joseph Schumpeter's book in which he wrote about creative destruction. 4.  Homo Deus -- Yuval Noah Harari. 5. Free Lunch Society. 6. Andrew Yang on the New Politics America Needs -- Episode 27 of Brave New World. 7. Nandan Nilekani on an Egalitarian Internet -- Episode 15 of Brave New World. 8. Notes on Elinor Ostrom on Wikipedia, Britannica, Econlib and the Nobel Prize website. 9. Adam Alter on Beating Our Addictions -- Episode 28 of Brave New World.

The problem of the rule of law is inescapable in any society - and even more especially in the context of economic development. Policies that promote prosperity cannot be devoid of considerations for the rights of people who make up the society and the economy, regardless of all technocratic pretensions otherwise. Adam Smith himself stated that economic prosperity thus requires ''a tolerable administration of justice''. Some readers might already start objecting to my treatment of the rule of law as merely an ''instrumental variable'' of a more desirous economic end-state, whereas the more familiar treatment is that of a society governed by the rule of law as an end-state in itself. There are merits to such quibbles, but there is also plenty of evidence in modern history that the rule of law is an essential cog in the wheel of prosperity.WHAT IS ''RULE OF LAW''?''Rule of law'' is the generally accepted description for how well a political system conforms to formal rules - rather than functioning through the whims of the most powerful social or political agents. For a society to be described as one functioning under rule of law - there must be rules and those rules must be equally applied to everyone in the society. Let us call this Letter of the Law. These rules are usually expressed through the constitution of a country and enforced through the courts. But simply having rules and enforcing them does not suffice in the making of the rule of law - and it is an incomplete (however accurate) conception of it. Some rules can be drafted in bad faith or with the express purpose of protecting the interest of the political elites responsible for governance. This is why many scholars have argued that the rule of law can only be said to exist in a state that functions under rules designed to protect the civil liberties (individual rights, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc.) of the people living within its territory. Let us call this the Character or Spirit of the Law. The character of the law understood as the fulfilment of constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties is the most common standard by which governance is judged to conform or deviate from the rule of law. For example, countries that routinely violate the rights of citizens in whatever form cannot be said to be governed by the rule of law, even if it has a written constitution. Consideration of the character of the law is the context to understanding the work of my guest on this episode, Paul Gowder.He is a professor of law at NorthWestern university with a broad research interest and expertise. Paul departs from this common derivation of the character of the law as rooted in liberty - and argued that for the rule of law to be broadly applicable in different societies (not dependent on the political institutions and ethical ideals of any specific society) with varying cultures and traditions of governance, it must be rooted in Equality. To understand Paul's argument, I will briefly state two important aspects that set the tone for our conversation - this should not be taken as an exhaustive summary of his work and I encourage you to check out his website and book. The first is that the rule of law as a principle regulates the actions of the state (government), and it is not to be conflated with other rules that regulate the actions of citizens. This is such an important point because one of the most egregious expressions of the law is when a government uses it to oppress citizens. Secondly, Paul outlines three components of the rule of law based on equality as 1) regularity - the government can only use coercion when it is acting in ''good faith'' and under ''reasonable interpretation'' of rules that already exist and are specific to the circumstances. 2) publicity - the law has to be accessible to everyone without barriers (''officials have a responsibility to explain their application of the law, ...failure to do so commits hubris and terror against the public"). 3) generality - the law must be equally applicable to all. Putting all these elements together gives us a rule of law regime where everyone is equal before the law, and the state does not wantonly abuse citizens or single out particular groups for systematic abuse.I enjoyed this conversation very much, and I want to thank Paul for talking to me. Thank you guys too for always listening, and for the other ways you support this project.TRANSCRIPTTobi; I greatly enjoyed your work on the rule of law. I've read your papers, I've read your book, and I like it very much. I think it's a great public service if I can say that because for a lot of time, I am interested in economic development and that is mostly the issue that this podcast talks about. And what you see in that particular conversation is there hasn't really been that much compatibility between the question of the rule of law or the laws that should regulate the actions of the state, and its strategy for economic development. Most of the time, you often see even some justification, I should say, to trample on rights in as much as you get development, you get high-income growth for it. And what I found in your work is, this does not have to be so. So what was your eureka moment in coming up with your concept, we are going to unpack a lot of the details very soon, but what motivated you to write this work or to embark on this project?Paul; Yeah, I think for me, part of the issue that really drives a lot of how I think about the rule of law and you know, reasons behind some of this work is really a difference between the way that those of us who think about human freedom and human equality, right? I think of it as philosophers, right. So they're philosophers and philosophers think about the ability of people to live autonomous lives, to sort of stand tall against their government, to live lives of respect, and freedom and equality. And that's one conversation. And so we see people, like, you know, Ronald Dworkin, thinking about what the rule of law can deliver to human beings in that sense. And then, you know, there's this entire development community, you know, the World Bank, lots of the US foreign policy, all of the rest of those groups of people and groups of ideas, talk about the rule of law a lot and work to measure the rule of law and invest immense amounts of money in promoting what they call the rule of law across the world. But mostly, it seems to be protecting property rights for multinational investment. And I mean, that makes some kind of sense, if you think that what the rule of law is for is economic development, is increasing the GDP of a country and integrating it into favourable international networks of trade. But if you think that it's about human flourishing, then you get a completely different idea of what the rule of law can be, and should be. And so this sort of really striking disjuncture between the two conversations has driven a lot of my work, especially recently, and especially reflecting even on the United States, I think that we can see how domestic rule of law struggles - which we absolutely have, I mean, look at the Trump administration, frankly, as revolving around this conflict between focusing on economics and focusing on human rights and human wellbeing.Tobi; It's interesting the polarization you're talking about. And one way that I also see it play out is [that] analyst or other stakeholders who participate in the process of nation-building in Africa, in Nigeria… a lot of us that care about development and would like to see our countries grow and develop and become rich, are often at opposite ends with other people in the civil society who are advocating for human rights, who are advocating for gender equality, who are advocating for so many other social justice issues. And it always seems like there's no meeting ground, you know, between those set of views, and I believe it does not have to be so. So one thing I'm going to draw you into quite early is one of the distinctions you made in so many of your papers and even your book is the difference between the conception of the rule of law that you are proposing versus the generally accepted notion of the rule of law based on individual liberty in the classical liberal tradition. I also think that's part of the problem, because talking about individual liberty comes with this heavy ideological connotation, and giving so many things that have happened in Africa with colonialism and so many other things, nobody wants any of that, you know. So you are proposing a conception of the rule of law that is based on equality. Tell me, how does that contrast with this popularly accepted notion of the rule of law [which is] based on individual liberty?Paul; So I think the way to think about it is to start with the notion of the long term stability of a rule of law system. And so here is one thing that I propose as a fact about legal orders. Ultimately, any kind of stable legal order that can control the powerful, that is, that can say to a top-level political leader, or a powerful multinational corporation, or whomever, no, you can't do this, this violates the law and make that statement stick depends on widespread collective mobilization, if only as a threat, right. And so it's kind of an analytic proposition about the nature of power, right? If you've got a top-level political leader who's in command of an army, and they want to do something illegal, it's going to require very broad-based opposition, and hence very broad-based commitment to the idea of leaders that follow the law in order to prevent the person in charge of an army from just casually violating it whenever they want. Okay, accept that as true, what follows from that? Well, what follows from that is that the legal system has to actually be compatible with the basic interests of all. And what that tends to mean and I think this is true, both historically, and theoretically, is leaving aside the philosophical conceptual difference between liberty and equality, which I'm not sure is really all that important. Like I think, ultimately, liberty and equality as moral ideas tend to blur together when you really unpack them. But practically speaking, any stable legal order that can control the powerful has to be compatible with the interests of a broad-based group of the human beings who participate in that legal order. And what that entails is favouring a way of thinking about the rule of law that focuses on being able to recruit the interests of even the worst off. In other words, one that's focused on equality, one that's focused on protecting the interests of the less powerful rather than a laissez-faire libertarian conception of the rule of law that tends to be historically speaking, compatible with substantial amounts of economic inequality, hyper-focus on ideas - like property rights, that support the long-standing interests of those who happen to be at the top of the economy, often against the interests of those that happened to be at the bottom of the economy, right. That's simply not a legal order that is sustainable in the long run. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the way that this has played out in [the] United States history, in particular. I might have a book that's coming out in December that focuses on a historical account of the development of the rule of law, particularly in the United States. I mean, it's my own country. And so at some point, I had to get talked into writing that book. And we can see that in our history right at the get-go, you know, in the United States, at the very beginning, the rule of law dialogue tended to be focused on protecting the interests of wealthy elite property holders. And this actually played a major part, for example, in the United States' most grievous struggle, namely the struggle over slavery, because slaveholders really relied on this conception of the Rule of Law focusing on individual freedom and property rights to insist on a right to keep holding slaves against the more egalitarian idea that “hey, wait a minute, the enslaved have a right to be participants in the legal system as well.” And so we can see these two different conceptions of legality breaking the United States and breaking the idea of legal order in the United States right at the get-go. And we see this in country after country after country. You know, another example is Pinochet's Chile, which was the victim of [the] United States' economics focused rule of law promotion efforts that favoured the interests of property holders under this libertarian conception over the interests of ordinary citizens, democracy and mass interests. In other words, over the egalitarian conception, and again, you know, devolved into authoritarianism and chaos.Tobi; Yeah, nice bit of history there, but dialling all the way, if you'll indulge me... dialling all the way to the present, or maybe the recent past, of course; where I see another relevance and tension is development, and its geopolitical significance and the modernization projects that a lot of developed countries have done in so many poor and violent nations, you know, around the world. I mean, at the time when Africa decolonized, you know, a lot of the countries gravitated towards the communist bloc, socialism [and] that process was shunted, failed, you know, there was a wave of military coups all over the continent, and it was a really dark period.But what you see is that a lot of these countries, Nigeria, for example, democratized in 1999, a lot of other countries either before then or after followed suit. And what you see is, almost all of them go for American-style federal system, and American-style constitutional democracy, you know. And how that tradition evolved... I mean, there's a lot you can explain and unpack here... how that tradition evolved, we are told is the law has a responsibility to treat people as individuals. But you also find that these are societies where group identities are very, very strong, you know, and what you get are constitutions that are weakly enforced, impractical, and a society that is perpetually in struggle. I mean, you have a constitution, you have rules, and you have a government that openly disregards them, because the constitutional tradition is so divorced from how a lot of our societies evolve. And what I see you doing in your work is that if we divorce the rule of law from the ideal society, you know [like] some societies that we look up to, then we can come up with a set of practical propositions that the rule of law should fulfil, so walk me through how you resolve these tensions and your propositions?Paul; Well, so it's exactly what you just said, right? I mean, we have to focus on actual existing societies and the actual way that people organize their lives, right. And so here's the issue is, just like I said a minute ago, the rule of law fundamentally depends on people. And when I say people, I don't just mean elites. I don't just mean the wealthy, I don't just mean the people in charge of armies, and the people in charge of courthouses, right? Like the rule of law depends, number one, on people acting collectively to hold the powerful to the law. And number two, on people using the institutions that we say are associated with the rule of law. And so just as you describe, one sort of really common failure condition for international rule of law development efforts - and I don't think that this is a matter of sort of recipient countries admiring countries like the US, I think this is a matter of international organizations and countries like the US having in their heads a model of what the law looks like and sort of pressing it on recipient countries.But you know, when you build institutions that don't really resemble how the people in a country actually organize their social, political and legal lives, you shouldn't be surprised when nobody uses them. You shouldn't be surprised when they're ineffective. But I mean, I think that it's been fairly compared to a kind of second-generation colonialism in that sense where countries like the US and like Germany, attempt to export their legal institutions to other countries, without attending to the ways that the people in those countries already have social and legal resources to run their lives. And so I'll give you an example that's interesting from Afghanistan. So in Afghanistan, sort of post the 2000s invasion, and so forth, some researchers, mostly affiliated with the Carnegie Institution, found that the really effective rule of law innovations, the really effective interventions were ones that relied on existing social groups and existing structures of traditional authority. And so, you know, you could build a courthouse and like, ask a formal centralized state to do something, maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't, maybe people would use it, maybe they wouldn't. But if you took local community leaders, local religious leaders, gave them training, and how to use the social capital they already have to help do things like adjudicate disputes, well, those would actually be effective, because they fit into the existing social organization that already exists. So I'll give you another example. I have a student who... I had… I just graduated an S.J.D student from Uganda who wrote a dissertation on corruption in Uganda. And one of the things that he advocated for I think, really sensibly was, “ okay, we've got this centralized government, but we've also got all of these traditional kingdoms, and the traditional kingdoms, they're actually a lot more legitimate in the sociological sense than the centralized government.People trust the traditional kingdoms, people rely on the traditional kingdoms for services, for integrating themselves into their society. And so one useful way of thinking about anti-corruption reforms is to try and empower the traditional kingdoms that already have legitimacy so that they can check the centralized government. And so that kind of work, I think, is where we have real potential to do global rule of law development without just creating carbon copies of the United States. Tobi; The process you describe, I will say, as promising as it may sound, what I want to ask you is how then do you ensure that a lot of these traditional institutions that can be empowered to provide reasonable checks to the power of the central government also fulfil the conditions of equality in their relation to the general public? Because even historically, a lot of these institutions are quite hierarchical...Paul; Oh, yeah... and I think in particular, women's rights are a big problem.Tobi; Yeah, yeah and there's a lot of abuses that go on locally, even within those communities, you know. We have traditional monarchies who exercise blanket rights over land ownership, over people's wives, over so many things, you know, so how then does this condition of equality transmit across the system?Paul; Yeah, no, I think that's the really hard question. I tell you right now that part of the answer is that those are not end-state processes. By this I mean that any realistic conception of how we can actually build effective rule of law institutions, but also genuinely incorporate everyone's interests in a society is going to accept that there's going to be a kind of dynamic tension between institutions.You know, sometimes we're going to have to use the centralized state to check traditional institutions. Sometimes we're going to have to use traditional institutions to check the centralized state. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and her sort of the Bloomington School of Political Economy, emphasized for many years this idea that they called Polycentrism. That is the idea that multiple, overlapping governance organizations that are sort of forced to negotiate with one another, and forced to learn from one another, and really integrate with one another in this sort of complex tension-filled kind of way, actually turns out to be a really effective method of achieving what we might call good governance. And part of the reason is because they give a lot of different people, in different levels of [the] organization, ways to challenge one another, ways to demand inclusion in this decision, and let somebody else handle that decision, and participate jointly in this other decision. And so I think that neither the centralized state alone, nor traditional institutions alone is going to be able to achieve these goals. But I think efforts to integrate them have some promise. And India has done a lot of work, you know, sort of mixed record of success, perhaps, but has done a lot of work in these lines. I think, for example, of many of the ways that India has tried to promote the growth of Panchayats, of local councils in decision making, including in law enforcement, but at the same time, has tried to do things like promote an even mandate, the inclusion of women, the inclusion of Scheduled Castes, you know, the inclusion of the traditionally subordinated in these decision making processes. And as I said, they haven't had complete success. But it's an example of a way that the centralized state can both support traditional institutions while pushing those institutions to be more egalitarian.Tobi; Let's delve into the three conditions that you identified in your work, which any rule of law state should fulfil. And that is regularity, publicity, and generality. Kindly unpack those three for me.Paul; Absolutely. So regularity is...we can think of it as just the basic rule of law idea, right? Like the government obeys the law. And so if you think about this notion of regularity, it's... do we have a situation where the powerful are actually bound by legal rules? Or do we have a situation where, you know, they just do whatever they want? And so I'd say that, you know, there's no state that even counts as a rule of law state in the basic level without satisfying that condition, at least to some reasonable degree. The idea of publicity really draws on a lot of what I've already been saying about the recruitment of broad participation in the law. That is, when I say publicity, what I mean is that in addition to just officials being bound by the law, ordinary people have to be able to make use of the law in at least two senses. One, they have to be able to make use of the law to defend themselves. I call this the individualistic side of publicity, right? Like if some police officer wants to lock you up, the decision on whether or not you violated the law has to respond to your advocacy, and your ability to defend yourself in some sense. And then there's also the collective side of this idea of publicity, which is that the community as a whole has to be able to collectively enforce the boundaries of the legal system. And you know, we'd talk a lot more about that, I think that's really the most important idea. And then the third idea of generality is really the heart of the egalitarian idea that we've been talking about, which is that the law has to actually treat people as equals. And one thing that I think is really important about the way that I think about these three principles is that they're actually really tightly integrated. By tightly integrated, I mean you're only going to get in real-world states, regularity (that is, officials bound by the law) if you have publicity (that is, if you have people who aren't officials who actually can participate in the legal system and can hold officials to the law). We need the people to hold the officials in line. You're only going to get publicity if you have generality. That is, the people are only going to be motivated to use the legal system and to defend the legal system if the legal system actually treats them as equals. And so you really need publicity to have stable regularity, you really need generality to have stable publicity.Tobi; Speaking of regularity, when you say what constrains the coercive power of the state is when it is authorised by good faith and reasonable interpretation of pre-existing reasonably specific rules. That sounds very specific. And it's also Scalonian in a way, but a lot of people might quibble a bit about what is reasonable, you know, it sounds vague, right? So how would you condition or define reasonable in this sense, and I know you talked about hubris when you were talking about publicity. But is there a minimum level of responsibility for reasonability on the part of the citizen in relation to a state?Paul; That's, in a lot of ways, the really hard philosophical question, because one of the things that we know about law is that it is inherently filled with disagreement, right? Like our experience of the legal system and of every state that actually has something like the rule of law is that people radically disagree about the legal propriety of actions of the government. And so in some sense, this idea of reasonableness is kind of a cop-out. But it's a cop-out that is absolutely necessary, because there's no, you know, what [Thomas] Nagel called a view from nowhere. There's no view from nowhere from which we can evaluate whether or not on a day to day basis, officials are actually complying with the law in some kind of correct sense. But again, I think, you know, as you said, to some extent, that implies that some of the responsibility for evaluating this reasonableness criterion falls down to day to day politics, falls down to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Like, my conception of the rule of law is kind of sneakily a deeply democratic conception, because it recognizes given the existence of uncertainty as to what the law actually requires of officials both on a case by case basis. And, broadly speaking, the only way that we're ever going to be able to say, Well, you know, officials are more or less operating within a reasonable conception of what their legal responsibilities are, is if we empower the public at large to make these judgments. If we have institutions like here in the US, our jury trials, if we have an underlying backstop of civil society and politics, that is actively scrutinizing and questioning official action.Tobi; So speaking of publicity, which is my favorite...I have to say...Paul; Mine too. You could probably tell. Tobi; Because I think that therein lies the power of the state to get away with abusive use of its legitimacy, or its power, so to speak. When you say that officials have a responsibility to explain their application of the law, and a failure to do so commits hubris and terror against the public. So those two situations - hubris and terror, can you explain those to me a bit?Paul; Yeah. So these are really, sort of, moral philosophy ideas at heart, particularly hubris. The idea is there's a big difference, even if I have authority over you, between my exercising that authority in the form of commands and my exercising that authority in the form of a conversation that appeals to your reasoning capacity, right. So these days, I'm thinking about it in part with reference to... I'm going to go very philosophical with you here... but in reference to Kant's humanity formulation of the categorical imperative, sorry. But that is a sense in which if I'm making decisions about your conduct, and your life and, you know, affecting your fundamental interests, that when I express the reasons to you for those decisions, and when I genuinely listen to the reasons that you offer, and genuinely take those into account in my decision making process, I'm showing a kind of respect for you, which is consistent with the idea of a society of equals.As opposed to just hi, I'm wiser than you, and so my decision is, you know, you go this way, you violated the law, right? Are we a military commander? Or are we a judge? Both the military commander and the judge exercise authority, but they do so in very different ways. One is hierarchical, the other I would contend is not.Tobi; Still talking about publicity here, and why I love it so much is one important, should I say… a distinction you made quite early in your book is that the rule of law regulates the action of the state, in relation to its citizens.Paul; Yes.Tobi; Often and I would count myself among people who have been confused by that point as saying that the rule of law regulates the action of the society in general. I have never thought to make that distinction. And it's important because often you see that maybe when dealing with civil disobedience, or some kind of action that the government finds disruptive to its interests, or its preferences, the rule of law is often invoked as a way for governments to use sometimes without discretion, its enforcement powers, you know.So please explain further this distinction between the rule of law regulating the state-citizen relation versus the general law and order in the society. I mean, you get this from Trump, you get this from so many other people who say, Oh, we are a law and order society, I'm a rule of law candidate.Paul; Oh, yeah.Tobi; You cannot do this, you cannot do that. We cannot encourage the breakdown of law and order in the society. So, explain this difference to me.Paul; Absolutely, then this is probably the most controversial part of my account of the rule of law. I think everybody disagrees with this. I sort of want to start by talking about how I got to this view. And I think I really got to this view by reflecting on the civil rights movement in the United States in particular, right. Because, you know, what we would so often see, just as you say about all of these other contexts, is we would see officials, we would see judges - I mean, there are, you know, Supreme Court cases where supreme court justices that are normally relatively liberal and sympathetic, like, you know, Justice Hugo Black scolding Martin Luther King for engaging in civil disobedience on the idea that it threatens the rule of law. It turns out, and this is something that I go into in the book that's coming out in December... it turns out that King actually had a sophisticated theory of when it was appropriate to engage in civil disobedience and when it wasn't. But for me, reflecting on that conflict in particular, and reflecting on the fact that the same people who were scolding peaceful lunch-counter-sit-ins for threatening the rule of law and, you know, causing society to descend into chaos and undermining property rights and all the rest of that nonsense, were also standing by and watching as southern governors sent police in to beat and gas and fire hose and set dogs on peaceful protests in this sort of completely new set of like, totally unbounded explosions of state violence. And so it seems to me sort of intuitively, like these can't be the same problem, right, like ordinary citizens, doing sit-ins, even if they're illegal, even if we might have some reason to criticize them, it can't be the same reason that we have to criticize Bull Connor for having the cops beat people. And part of the reason that that's the case, and this is what I call the Hobbesian property in the introduction to the rule of law in the real world...part of the reason is just the reality of what states are, right? Like, protesters don't have tanks and police dogs, and fire hoses, right? Protesters typically don't have armies. If they do, then we're in a civil war situation, not a rule of law situation, the state does have all of those things. And so one of the features of the state that makes it the most appropriate site for this talk about the rule of law is this the state has, I mean, most modern states have, at least on a case by case basis, overwhelming power. And so we have distinct moral reasons to control overwhelming power than we do to control a little bit of legal disobedience, right, like overwhelming power is overwhelming. It's something that has a different moral importance for its control. Then the second idea is at the same time what I call the [...] property... is the state makes claims about its use of power, right? Like ordinary people, when they obey the law or violate the law, they don't necessarily do so with reference to a set of ideas that they're propagating about their relationship to other people. Whereas when modern states send troops in to beat people up, in a way what they're doing is they're saying that they're doing so in all of our names, right, particularly, but not exclusively in democratic governments. There's a way in which the state represents itself as acting on behalf of the political community at large. And so it makes sense to have a distinctive normative principle to regulate that kind of power.Tobi; I know you sort of sidestepped this in the book, and maybe it doesn't really fit with your overall argument. But I'm going to push you on that topic a bit. So how does the rule of law state as a matter of institutional design then handles... I know you said that there are separate principles that can be developed for guiding citizen actions, you know...Paul; Yes. Tobi; I mean, let's be clear that you are not saying that people are free to act however they want.Paul; I'm not advocating anarchy.Tobi; Exactly. So how does the rule of law state then handle citizens disagreements or conflicting interests around issues of social order? And I'll give you an example. I mentioned right at the beginning of our conversation what happened in Nigeria in October 2020. There's a unit of the police force that was created to handle violent crimes. Needless to say that they went way beyond their remit and became a very notoriously abusive unit of the police force. Picking up people randomly, lock them up, extort them for money. And there was a situation where a young man was murdered, and his car stolen by this same unit of the police force and young people all over the country, from Lagos to Port Harcourt to Abuja, everywhere, felt we've had enough, right, and everybody came out in protest. It was very, very peaceful, I'd say, until other interests, you know, infiltrated that action. Paul; Right. Tobi; But what I noticed quite early in that process was that even within the spirits of that protests, there were disagreements between citizens - protesters blocking roads, you know, versus people who feel well, your protest should not stop me from going to work, you know, and so many other actions by the protesters that other people with, maybe not conflicting interests, but who have other opinions about strategy or process feel well, this is not right. This is not how to do this. This is not how you do this, you know, and I see that that sort of provided the loophole, I should say, for the government to then move in and take a ruthlessly violent action. You know, there was a popular tollgate in Lagos in the richest neighbourhood in Lagos that was blocked for 10 days by the protesters. And I mean, after this, the army basically moved in and shot people to death. Today, you still see people who would say, Oh, well, that's tragic. But should these people have been blocking other people from going about their daily business? So how does the rule of law regulate issues of social order vis-a-vis conflict of interest?Paul; So I think this is actually a point in favour of my stark distinction between state action and social action as appropriate for thinking about the rule of law. Because when you say that the state used...what I still fundamentally think of as like minor civil disobedience...so, like blocking some roads, big deal! Protesters block roads all the time, right, like protesters have blocked roads throughout human history, you know, like, sometimes it goes big, right? Like they love blocking roads in the French Revolution. But oftentimes, it's just blocking... so I blocked roads.I participated in, you know, some protests in the early 2000s. I participated in blocking roads in DC, right, like, fundamentally "big deal!" is the answer that the state ought to give. And so by saying to each other and to the government, when we talk about the rule of law, we mean, the state's power has to be controlled by the law, I think that gives us a language to say... even though people are engaging in illegal things, the state still has to follow legal process in dealing with it, right.The state still has to use only the level of force allowed by the law to arrest people. The state can't just send in the army to shoot people. And the principle that we appeal to is this principle of the rule of law. Yeah, maintaining the distinction between lawbreaking by ordinary people and law-breaking by the state helps us understand why the state shouldn't be allowed to just send in troops whenever people engage in a little bit of minor lawbreaking and protests.Tobi; So how does the law... I mean, we are entering a bit of a different territory, how does the law in your conception handles what... well, maybe these are fancy definitions, but what some people will call extraordinary circumstances. Like protests with political interests? Maybe protesters that are funded and motivated to unseat an incumbent government? Or in terrorism, you know, where you often have situations where there are no laws on paper to deal with these sort of extraordinary situations, you know, and they can be extremely violent, they can be extremely strange, they're usually things that so many societies are not equipped to handle. So how should the rule of law regulate the action of the state in such extraordinary circumstances?Paul; Yeah, so this is the deep problem of the rule of law, you know, this is why people still read Carl Schmitt, right, because Carl Schmitt's whole account of executive power basically is, hey, wait a minute emergencies happen, and when emergencies happen, liberal legal ideas like the rule of law dropout, and so fundamentally, you just have like raw sovereignty. And that means that the state just kind of does what it must. Right. So here's what I feel about Schmitt. One is, maybe sometimes that's true, right? And again, I think about the US context, because I'm an American and you know, I have my own history, right? And so in the US context, I think, again, about, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, right.Like Abraham Lincoln broke all kinds of laws in the Civil War. Like today, we'd call some of the things that he did basically assuming dictatorial power in some respects. I mean, he did that in the greatest emergency that the country had ever faced and has ever faced since then. And he did it in a civil war. And sometimes that happens, and I think practically speaking, legal institutions have a habit of not standing in the way in truly dire situations like that. But, and here's why I want to push back against Carl Schmitt... but what a legal order can then do is after the emergency has passed...number one, the legal order can be a source of pressure for demanding and accounting of when the emergency has passed, right. And so again, I think of the United States War on Terror, you know, we still have people in United States' custody imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.September 11 2001, was almost 20 years ago. It's actually 20 years ago and a month, and we still have people locked up in Guantanamo Bay. That's insane. That's completely unjustifiable. And one of the jobs of the legal system is to pressure the executive to say, okay, buddy, is the emergency over yet? No, really, we think that the emergency is over yet. I want reasons, right, publicity again, I want an explanation from you of why you think the emergency is still ongoing. And the legal system can force the executive to be accountable for the claim that the emergency is still ongoing. That's number one. Number two is that law tends to be really good at retroactively, sort of, retrofitting things into legal order, right. And so again, I think about the Civil War. You know, after the US Civil War, lots of civil wars, sorry. American-centric person trying to fight against it. But after the US Civil War, you know, the courts took a pause. And then we have a lot of cases where they took a lot of the things that Lincoln did, they said, okay, some of them at least were illegal, some of them were legal, but only under very specific circumstances. And so they actually built legal doctrine that took into account the emergency that Lincoln faced, and then later wars, such as in the Second World War, the courts took the lessons from the experience in the American Civil War, and used that to impose more constraints. So to bring it about that the emergency actions that Franklin Roosevelt took in the Second World War weren't completely sui generis, sort of like right acts of sovereignty, but were regulated by legal rules created during the Civil War, and after the Civil War. And again, they weren't perfect, right? You know, during the Second World War, the United States interned Japanese Americans, you know, again, sort of completely lawless, completely unjustifiable, but you know, it's an ongoing process. The point is that the legal system is always... the law is always reactive in emergencies. But the reactive character of the law can nonetheless be used as a way to control and channel sovereign power, even in these sort of Schmittian emergency situations.Tobi; So two related questions, your work is interdisciplinary, because you try to blend a lot of social science into legal philosophy. But speaking of legal order and your primary profession, I mean.. for the sake of the audience parties into a lot of other cool stuff, I'm going to be putting up his website in the show notes. But speaking of legal order, and the legal profession, why is so much of the legal profession fascinated with what I would say the rule by law, as opposed to the rule of law. A lot of what you get from lawyers, even some law professors in some situations is [that] the law is the law, and you have to obey it. And even if you are going to question it, however unjustified it may seem, you still have to follow some processes that maybe for ordinary citizens are not so accessible or extremely costly, you know, which I think violate regularity, right, the way you talk about it retrospective legislation, and so many other things. So why is the legal profession so fascinated with the law, as opposed to justification for the law?Paul; Yeah, I think that question kind of answers itself, right. It's unfortunate... I mean, it's sort of natural but it's unfortunate that the people who most influence our dialogue about the way that we, you know, live in [the] society together with a state, namely by organizing ourselves with law happen to be people who are the specialists who find it easiest, right? And so I think the simple answer is right on this one, at least in countries like the United States, I'm not sure how true this is in other countries. But in the United States, the domination of legal discourse by lawyers necessarily means that the sort of real practical, real-world ways in which ordinary people find interacting with anything legal to be difficult, oppressive, or both just aren't in view, right? This is hard for them to understand.But I think in the US, one of the distortions that we've had is that we have an extremely hierarchical legal profession, right. So we have very elite law schools, and those very elite law schools - one of which I teach at - tend to predominantly produce lawyers who primarily work for wealthy corporations and sort of secondarily work for the government. Those lawyers tend to be the ones that end up at the top of the judiciary, that end up in influential positions in academia, that end up, you know, in Congress. The lawyers that, you know, see poor people, see people of subordinated minority groups and see the very different kinds of interactions with the legal system that people who are worse off have, that see the way that the law presents itself, not as a thing that you can use autonomously to structure your own life. But as a kind of external imposition, that sort of shows up and occasionally inflicts harm on you. Those lawyers aren't the ones who end up in our corridors of power. And it's very unfortunate, it's a consequence of the hierarchical nature of, at least in the US, our legal profession. And I suspect it's similar in these other countries as well.Tobi; In your opinion, what's the... dare I say the sacrosanct and objective - those are rigid conditions sorry - expression of the rule of law? The current general conception of the rule accedes to the primacy of the Constitution, right. I've often found that problematic because in some countries you find constitutional provisions that are egregious, and in other cases, you find lawyers going into court to challenge certain actions that they deem unjust, or that are truly unjust on the basis of the same constitution. Right. So what do you think is the most practical expression of the rule of law? Is it written laws? Is it the opinion of the judges? Is it how officials hold themselves accountable? What's the answer?Paul; So I think I'm gonna like sort of twist this a little bit and interpret that question is like, how do you know the extent to which the rule of law exists in a particular place? And my answer is, can ordinary people look officials in the eye, right, you know... if you're walking down the street, and you see a police officer, you know, are you afraid? Or can you walk past them and confidently know you're doing nothing wrong so there's nothing really effectively but they can do to you, right? If you're called in to deal with some kind of bureaucratic problem, like the tax office, can you trust that you exist in a relationship of respect? You know, can you trust that when you show them, actually here are my receipts, I really did have that expense, that that's going to be taken seriously? You know, if people, everybody, feels like they can stand tall, and look government officials in the eye, then to that extent, I think that the rule of law exists in a society.Tobi; Final question, what's the coolest idea you're working on right now?Paul; Oh, gosh. So like I said, I've got two books under contract right now. The first book is a history/theoretical constitutional law account of the development and existing state of the rule of law in the United States. The second book, which I'm more excited about, because it's the one that I plan to write this year, but it's also a lot harder, is I'm trying to take some of the governance design ideas that we see from the notion of rule of law development, and others such as governance development things and apply them to Private Internet platforms, right? Like, basically to Facebook. Um, I was actually involved in some of the work, not at a super high level, but I was involved in some of the work in designing or doing the research for designing Facebook's oversight board. And I'm kind of trying to expand on some of those ideas and think about, you know, if we really believe that private companies, especially in these internet platforms are doing governance right now, can we take lessons from how the rest of the world and how actual governments and actual states have developed techniques of governing behaviour in highly networked, large scale super-diverse environments and use those lessons in the private context? Maybe we can maybe we can't I'm not sure yet. Hopefully, by the time I finish the book, I'll know.Tobi; That's interesting. And I'll ask you this, a similar, I'll say a related situation is currently happening in Nigeria right now, where the President's Twitter handle or username, tweeted something that sounded like a thinly veiled threat to a particular ethnic group. And lots of people who disagreed with that tweet reported the tweet, and Twitter ended up deleting the tweet in question, which high-level officials in Nigeria found extremely offensive, and going as far as to assert their sovereign rights over Twitter and say, well, it may be your platform, but it is our country and we are banning you. How would you adjudicate such a situation? I mean, there's the question of banning Donald Trump from the platform and so many other things that have come up.Paul; Yeah, I mean, it's hard, right? So there are no easy answers to these kinds of problems. I think, ultimately, what we have to do is we have to build more legitimate ways to make these decisions. I mean, here are two things that we cannot do, right?Number one is we can't just let government officials, especially when, you know, as with the Donald Trump example, and so many others, the government officials are the ones who are engaging in the terrible conduct make these decisions. Number two is we also just can't let a bunch of people sitting in the Bay Area in California make those decisions. Like, ultimately, this is on, you know, property in some abstracted sense of like the shareholders of these companies. But we cannot simply allow a bunch of people in San Francisco, in Menlo Park, and you know, Cupertino and Mountain View, and all of those other little tech industry cities that have no understanding of local context to make the final decisions here. And so what we need to do is we need to build more robust institutions to include both global and local and affected countries, grassroots participation, in making these decisions. And I'm trying to sort of sketch out what the design for those might look like. But, you know, talk to me in about a year. And hopefully, I'll have a book for you that will actually have a sketch.Tobi; You bet I'm going to hold you to that. So, a year from now. So still on the question of ideas, because the show is about ideas. What's the one idea you'd like to see spread everywhere?Paul; Oh, gosh, you should have warned me in advance... that... I'm going to go back to what I said at the very beginning about the rule of law. Like I think that the rule of law depends on people, right? Like there is no such thing as the rule of law without a society and a legal system that genuinely is equal and advantageous to ordinary people enough to be the kind of thing that people actually support. Like ordinary people... if you cannot recruit the support of ordinary people for your legal political and social system, you cannot have the rule of law. That's true whether you're a developing country, that's true whether you're the United States, right. Like I think, you know, part of the reason that we got Donald Trump in the United States, I think, is because our legal system and with it our economy, and all the rest are so unequal in this country, that ordinary voters in the United States didn't see any reason to preserve it. Right and so when this lunatic and I mean, I'm just going to be quite frank here and say Donald Trump is a complete lunatic, right... when this lunatic is running for office who shows total disregard for existing institutions, like complete willingness to casually break the law. An electorate that actually was full of people who felt (themselves) treated respectfully and protected and supported by our legal and political institutions would have sent that guy packing in a heartbeat. But because the American people don't have that experience right now, I think that's what made us vulnerable to somebody like Donald Trump.Tobi; Thank you so much, Paul. It's been so fascinating talking to you.Paul; Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm happy to come back in a year when I've got the platform thing done.Tobi; Yeah, I'm so looking forward to that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe