---
slug: convergence-encyclopedia-c22
title: Convergence Encyclopedia: C22 — Commons / Institutional Design
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c22
---

**F1 — Tier.** T1 (Ostrom’s principles empirically validated across multiple case studies; Axelrod’s tournaments robust).

**F2 — Sources.** 
- Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
- Ostrom, E. (2009). Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.”
- Ostrom, E. (1990/2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press.
- Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books.
- Axelrod, R. (1997). The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration. Princeton University Press.
- Dietz, T., Ostrom, E. & Stern, P.C. (2003). “The struggle to govern the commons.” Science, 302(5652), 1907–1912.

**F3 — Domains.** Natural resource management (fisheries, forests, irrigation systems), digital commons (open source, Wikipedia), knowledge commons, urban governance.

**F4 — Scale.** Local irrigation system (~10² m) → global climate governance (~10⁷ m); temporal range from years to centuries of institutional evolution.

**F5 — Falsifier.** Ostrom’s design principles failing to predict outcomes — i.e., institutions that satisfy all of Ostrom’s principles (clear boundaries, proportional costs/benefits, collective choice, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution, minimal recognition of rights, nested enterprises) yet fail to sustain the commons; or institutions that violate most principles yet succeed. Systematic failure of the principles would undermine the convergence claim.

**F6 — Rival (strongest form).** Commons success is exceptional; most commons require central management or privatization (Hardin’s original position). Ostrom’s cases are a biased sample — she studied successful cases more than failed ones. The design principles are post-hoc rationalizations, not predictive rules. Government regulation and market mechanisms handle most resource governance; self-governance is a niche solution for small, homogeneous communities with shared norms. (Hardin 1968 Science 162:1243; criticisms by Stavins 2011 and others of Ostrom’s generalizability.)

**F7 — Independence.** MODERATE — partial lineage. Ostrom (political science, Indiana University/Bloomington) and Axelrod (political science, University of Michigan) were contemporaries and colleagues in the same intellectual community; both were influenced by game theory and institutional economics. Their work is not fully independent — Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation (1984) informed Ostrom’s framework. However, Ostrom’s empirical fieldwork (Swiss alpine meadows, Japanese villages, Philippine irrigation systems) was independent of Axelrod’s computational tournaments.

**F8 — Pattern type.** Social.

**F9 — Maps.** A4 (biosphere-ecosphere), A3 (pattern-dynamics).

---

## Corpus map
- Previous: [Convergence Encyclopedia: C21](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c21)
- Next: [Convergence Encyclopedia: C23](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c23)
- Encyclopedia start: [The Schema](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-schema)
- Same node, other planes: [Catalogue node C22](/a/oip-node-c22-commons-institutional-design) · [Catalogue hub](/a/oip-convergence-public-article)
- Kin corpora: [Total Structure](/a/oip-total-structure) · [Signature of the Grain](/a/oip-sog-preamble-axioms)
