Governing the Commons is not part of the modern “canon” in the subfield of comparative politics. This is both an awkward truth and an unfortunate one, because Elinor Ostrom's study offers comparativists of all sorts a long list of insights on a range of core issues.

The awkward truth about the book's salience requires some immediate specification to avoid a misunderstanding. This study has certainly found a broad and appreciative readership among students of politics in general. It would not be in its twenty-second printing were this not the case. Nor would it have been awarded prizes by the International Studies Association or the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.Footnote ¹ But the book seems to have been framed as a work in public choice and public policy, rather than as a work in comparative politics per se. Most of its reviews were in public policy and economics journals. Most of its reviewers were economists or public policy specialists, and most of the major journals of the subfield (most notably World Politics and Comparative Politics) failed to review the book at all. According to a systematic study of comparative politics reading lists published in 2003, very few top graduate programs had included it on their general examinations' reading lists more than a decade after its publication. The list of the 30 works most often assigned did include other books with seemingly similar approaches to similar topics: The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson (1971) and Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance by Douglass North (1990) were both denoted as “canonical.”Footnote ² Governing the Commons certainly did not go unread or unrecognized, but in comparative politics per se, it lacked the visibility of other texts.

In certain respects, these facts are not surprising. The book's policy focus is explicit from beginning to end, and Ostrom is not, after all, a member of a comparative politics faculty. It is possible that the book was not intended for a broad comparative politics audience. But it is very likely that it was neglected because it makes no reference to many of the institutions that comparativists (rightly or wrongly) take seriously. Ostrom calls eloquently for attention to context (as I discuss later). She draws our attention specifically to the importance of what she calls “political regimes,” but she leaves the concept of political regime uncharacteristically vague. She focuses almost exclusively on whether the political regimes in which local institutions are situated are “obstructive,” “neutral,” or “facilitative.” Whether these regimes are democracies or dictatorships, whether their relations with the actors in potentially self-governing institutions are mediated by social movements, electoral considerations, or party, ethnic, or religious links goes unexamined. The larger economic context in which political regimes operate goes unexplored as well.

We do not know if Ostrom's argument is indifferent to these factors or if she neglects them simply because the magnitude of what she does study made their inclusion impractical. But the fact that her analysis says little or nothing about so many of the institutions that are salient in the comparative politics literature may help explain why the book is less broadly known than it should be. Whatever the reasons behind it, its framing is unfortunate. In this case, as in many others, the boundaries around our subfields have obscured our common ground.

What have we missed? How does Governing the Commons enrich the study of comparative politics? Three clusters of insights stand out. The first is methodological and concerns the nature and utility of rational choice analysis. Ostrom's argument provides a vivid illustration of the diversity of visions within the rational choice school—a diversity that is often overlooked by outsiders. Comparativists who see themselves as critics of rational choice analysis will find many of their principal criticisms voiced pointedly by the author herself. Those who reject rational choice analysis on the grounds that it exaggerates the volitional power of ordinary people should note Ostrom's insistence that “the strategies available to an individual are ‘to support’ rather than ‘to choose’ because no single individual makes institutional choices” (p. 194). Scholars who question rational choice analysis because they “see political actors not as … all-knowing rational maximizers but as rule-following satisficers”Footnote ³ should note her argument that individuals are not likely to change “rules that work relatively well” because “searching for rules that will work even better” is too costly (p. 211). Critics who argue that rational choice analysis neglects nonmaterialist motivations should ponder Ostrom's assertion that “non-monetized relationships” may indeed be “important” for political actors and that we should avoid assuming that choices “are made to maximize some single observable variable” (p. 207). Those who argue that assumptions about “self-interested behavior are empty” “unless something is known about context”Footnote ⁴ should note Ostrom's insistence that predictions will be “vacuous” without “knowledge of the situational variables,” which affect the perceptions of benefits and costs (p. 193). Her commitment to contextualization leads her to use no fewer than 25 “situational variables” to explain when citizens succeed in solving collective action problems and when they fail. Her goal is clearly the creation of a practical and realistic framework for policymaking and not the creation of a parsimonious model.

Indeed, Ostrom's discussion of modeling is the most interesting and far-reaching aspect of her methodological contributions. Without denying the utility of formal modeling in general, she argues against using models alone as a basis for policymaking. She writes that “relying entirely on models to provide the foundation for policy analysis” leads scholars to “presume that they are omniscient observers, able to comprehend the essentials of how complex, dynamic systems work by creating stylized descriptions of some aspects of those systems” (p. 215; my emphasis). She goes on to caution that “presumed omniscience,” can lead to wrong-headed and even harmful policy recommendations. Her own recommendation is a call for strong empirics and what has come to be called a multimethod approach—running from reading Hobbes through doing fieldwork through conducting experiments.Footnote ⁵

Beyond her insistence on using multiple methods of inquiry, Ostrom offers a discussion of the limits of modeling that carries valuable lessons for comparativists in general. She explains (p. 184):

This passage carries two important insights. First, it takes us beyond the now-banal complaint that models are not “realistic” and provides a (literally) logical explanation for when and why models are limited in their applicability. Second, and more importantly, it carries a cautionary message about assumptions in general. Comparativists of all sorts now strive for “parsimony” and in so doing inevitably make assumptions about what is constant across the cases they study. For example, many comparativists assumed for decades that communist states would not collapse from within, that modernization would lead to secularization, and that the whole world longed for Western liberal democracy. Our predictive capacities and policy messages were surely hampered by these assumptions, but we often purveyed our partial understandings as general truths nevertheless. By highlighting how assumptions hamper analysis, this book provides a valuable message for us all.

One of the reasons that Ostrom's methodological insights will resonate with comparativists is because she is an unabashed empiricist—like most of us. She witnessed the evolution of self-governing institutions firsthand through intensive fieldwork as a doctoral student researching water use in Los Angeles. Her fieldwork provides the touchstone for her argument—and the incentive to ground its components in a total of 14 case studies (mixing successful and unsuccessful examples of collective action). Whereas many game theorists simply use case studies to illustrate their models, Ostrom actually grounds her theory in case materials instead. She thus avoids the primary “methodological pathologies” associated with rational choice analysis by Donald Green and Ian Shapiro. Her project is “problem driven” rather than “method-driven,” and she seeks not to vindicate a “universalist model” but “to understand and explain actual political outcomes.”Footnote ⁶

Ostrom's use of case materials to explain the “outcome” of successful institutional evolution exposes the logical connections between a broad range of abstract phenomena and individual thought processes. A second cluster of valuable insights relates to these connections. These macrophenomena are not the focus of Ostrom's argument, but a careful reader will see that she illuminates them nonetheless. Reading, for example, that status quo rules usually yield differential rewards (p. 200) and “always protect some individuals and expose others” (p. 202), we can see the links between path dependency and transformation costs. Reading that “achieving the benefit of small rule changes will transform [people's] calculus in evaluating [future], larger changes” (p. 200), we learn why gradualism is easier than rapid reform. Reading that dense social networks reinforce shared norms and lower projected monitoring and enforcement costs (pp. 205–6), we learn precisely why social networks are so often associated with successful institutional change. Reading that “individuals are less likely to adopt unfamiliar rules than those used [successfully] by others in similar circumstances” (p. 209), we learn that policy diffusion works because the experience of others provides valuable information and thereby reduces uncertainty. Finally, Ostrom's work helps explain the connection between institutional change and crisis. Whether a crisis exists or not, those who wish to implement rapid institutional change have incentives to use the language of crisis because “individuals weight potential losses more heavily than potential gains” (p. 208). If proponents of reform frame institutional change as a means of avoiding imminent disaster, they take advantage of this differential weighting.

Ostrom's contribution to the comparative politics literature goes beyond providing insights on how abstract phenomena relate to individual thought processes. The third cluster of contributions is derived from the book's explicit themes. At least two of them bear directly on core issues in comparative politics today. The first has to do with a critique of centralized rule. Ostrom states in the beginning of her book that many of the models used by social scientists for analyzing collective action bolster arguments for increasing centralization of political authority. She then goes on to illuminate centralization's dark side. Using a skillful blend of case material and theory, she sets the shortcomings of centralization in sharp relief. She shows us first and foremost that the institutional solutions imposed by central governments are often based on “idealized markets” or “idealized states” (p. 216). These idealized perspectives lead highly centralized regimes to rely on the same operational rules across varied locations. This uniformity proves deeply problematic because it drives up transformation costs, lowers the likelihood of innovation, and decreases the probability that the rules imposed will be appropriate for (inevitably varied) local needs. Local inequalities are likely to distort whatever institutional change the center might allow because the “individuals who have the resources … to make the best case to external officers are … likely to gain rules [that] advantage them the most” (p. 213). The common good will be sacrificed to local privilege.

The most troubling aspect of centralization is the high probability that central authorities will ignore or even destroy local governing institutions without examining how these institutions may help “acquire information, reduce monitoring costs, and equitably allocate appropriation rights and enforcement costs” (p. 216). Ostrom's insistence on respecting and even privileging local institutions anticipates James Scott's argument in Seeing Like a State (1998). Although these authors examine the interaction between local actors and outside officials from what are thought to be opposite poles in our subfield, they draw (on this point) remarkably similar conclusions. Scott offers us a powerful case against a “hegemonic planning mentality that excludes the necessary role of local knowledge and know-how,”Footnote ⁷ and Ostrom does the same.

Closely linked to Ostrom's theme regarding the costs of centralization is that regarding people's capacities for self-government. It is through this theme that the book speaks most eloquently to comparativists and the field of politics as a whole. It can and will be read in many ways, but I read it primarily as a celebration of human capability. Though its celebratory message is certainly muted by both the abstract language of game theory and the author's wholly unsentimental approach to her research question, the study provides a vivid parade of evidence showing that the problem-solving capability of ordinary people has been underestimated by social scientists and policymakers alike.

Ostrom's contribution to theory lies in showing that game theorists (such as Garrett Hardin and Olson) have taken the “prisoner” metaphor too far and that individuals sharing a common good are not caught “inevitably” in “a trap from which they cannot escape” (p. 21). Her case studies (and her abstract rational choice framework) show us not simply that the free-rider problem can be overcome but how. They also show us that we cannot assume that ordinary people will inevitably opt for the direct individual benefits of immediate exploitation and ignore the higher (but delayed and shared) costs of depletion. She illustrates, on the contrary, that ordinary people in Southern California, Switzerland, Japan, Spain, and the Philippines managed to solve complex collective action problems and both form and reform self-governing institutions with success. Challenging the common wisdom, she shows that collective action problems can be overcome even by large groups, if self-governing institutions are “nested.” The key lies in using already existing base-level institutions as the foundation of a multilayered, larger structure.

By tracing and explaining the conditions under which self-governing institutions evolve, Ostrom exposes both the inadequacy of prior theory and the wrongheadedness of the centralizing policies that theory often promotes. By focusing our attention on how common resources are actually governed rather than depleted by actors assumed to be short-sighted, Ostrom teaches us that ordinary people have the capacity to avoid the much-dreaded “tragedy of the commons.” Her comparison of failed and successful cases yields clear design principles for those who wish to promote self-governing reforms, but her message here is about much more than policy. Governing the Commons is surely a book about the dilemmas associated with sharing collective natural resources. Yet in chronicling and explaining people's capacity for self-government, it is also a book about inclusionary decision making and, thus, a book about democracy. As such, it is of lasting value to the field of comparative politics as a whole.