SUSTAINABLE HYDERABAD PROJECT

2 | NEWS EDITORIAL FROM THE PROJECT
Elinor Ostrom and Konrad Hagedorn
during the International
Conference on Cooperative Studies
in October 2008
world, emerged over years of extensive discussion
and empirical explorations. As the IAD
framework has proven to be a well-founded
organising schema for categorising concepts
that can be used to build theories for a variety
of empirical phenomena, it has successfully
served as a guiding heuristic and intellectual
map for conceptualising the complex issues of
research and implementation in our Sustainable
Hyderabad Project.
Institutional analysis of social-ecological
systems requires the kind of cross-disciplinary
work that we have been trying to do in our
project. Such work raises the difficult question
how to bring together people from different
disciplines and also make them understand
each other? Here, another significant contribution
made by Lin Ostrom comes into play. She
not only established frameworks for analysing
and crafting institutions, but also created a path
breaking institution of her own. Together with
Vincent, Lin founded the Workshop in Political
Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University
Bloomington in 1973, extending its scope
of operation internationally in the early 1980s
when they both spent a year at the Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research of Bielefeld University.
There they were strongly influenced by
different concepts and theories developed by
German scholars – for example, in the areas
of Ordnungstheorie and game theory, and the
work of Nobel Prize Winner Reinhard Selten
– maintaining contact with many institutes in
Germany long afterward.
For Lin Ostrom, the Workshop became an
institution that was most dear to her heart.
Now named after its founders, it is multidisciplinary,
multi-national and has developed
a particular culture of academic discussion.
Coming out of the Ostroms’ ground-breaking
work, the Bloomington School established an
organised program of advanced studies for visiting
scholars from around the world, a place
where they can share their experiences and expertise.
The Workshop has generously hosted
about 500 such scholars, among them several
members from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s
RESS division.
There is a strong link between the community
of scholars associated with the Workshop
and one of those fields of research in which
Elinor Ostrom developed a revolutionary and
ground-breaking innovation. This is her research
on common pool resources (CPR) and
common property, leading to the publication
of her book Governing the Commons (1990),
wherein she carefully revealed the characteristics
of successful and unsuccessful CPR institutions
and she arrived at a theory of collective
action regarding their constitution and maintenance.
In particular, she identified a “set of
design principles” that characterise successful
CPR regimes. After this advance, it is unlikely
that there is anyone left in the scientific community
who actually believes that the “tragedy
of the commons” can reasonably be considered
a general paradigm.
Visit at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for Participating
in the Advisory Council
Also standing out among her many publications,
in the award-winning Understanding
Institutional Diversity (2005) Ostrom stresses
that we certainly are able to improve the sets
of rules – the institutions – that regularise interaction
between ecological and social systems.
Yet she recognises that these systems
are very complex and vary from case to case.
Consequently, applying standard concepts for
institutional design may lead to unintended
outcomes. Thus it is important for policy analysts
to learn from concrete situations and
conditions, to be involved instead of assuming
that they are able to make “optimal” policy
recommendations while being isolated from
the problems they are advising on. The notion
of one true model or solution that fits all
situations must be abandoned. We can actually
do great harm if we apply simple solutions
to complex problems and then try to impose
them on every situation. In other words, due to
the complexity of action situations and ecosystems,
oversimplification is dangerous. Professor
Ostrom’s answer to this problem was not
to resort to blueprints, but rather to reveal “design
principles” of successful institutions, based
on experience regarding viable institutions and
governance structures. Institutional diversity,
she concluded, contributes to the robustness
of institutions and governance systems.
Lin Ostrom’s inventiveness and steadiness
in contributing to theoretical and conceptual
discussions in the area of institutions and sustainability
was also demonstrated during the
last few years by several leading publications
SUSTAINABLE HYDERABAD PROJECT ISSUES 09 AND 10