Across the world, Covid-19 has triggered community action on a vast scale. It’s a powerful riposte to both government and private money There is no guarantee that this resurgence of collective action will survive the pandemic. We could revert to the isolation and passivity that both capitalism and statism have encouraged. But I don’t think […]
PPPPs for Climate Change
Co-authored with Dror Etzion and Saku Mantere; adapted from “Wordly Strategy for the Global Climate” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Fall 2018). Does this consolidation scenario sound utopian? Not when seen in the cooperative activities across the three sectors in Denmark, which has become an exemplary model of shifting to alternate forms of energy. […]
TThe Tragedy of the Commons: How Elinor Ostrom Solved One of Life’s Greatest Dilemmas
The design principles for solving the tragedy of the commons can be applied to all groups As an evolutionary biologist who received my PhD in 1975, I grew up with Garrett Hardin’s essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” published in Science magazine in 1968. His parable of villagers adding too many cows to their common pasture captured […]
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action is an examination of the nature of the commons, and the evolution and development of self-organisation and self-governance of those commons. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action will be of interest to those who seek an understanding of common-pool resources and their self-governance. […]
Would Twitter Ruin Bee Democracy?
Simple-majority democracy is used by many animals. But they don’t have social media. Did the ancient Athenians invent democracy? Or did bugs have it way earlier than the Greeks? Cornell entomologist Tom Seeley knows which option he’s voting for. Honeybees regularly split from their mother colony. Seeley wondered, with tens of thousands of bees in […]
