The Meaning, Prospects, and Future of the Commons: Revisiting the Legacies of Elinor Ostrom and Henry George

• Author: Franklin Obeng‐Odoom
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12144
• Date: 01 March 2016
• Published date: 01 March 2016

The Meaning, Prospects, and Future of the

Commons: Revisiting the Legacies of Elinor

Ostrom and Henry George

By FRANKLIN OBENG-ODOOM*

ABSTRACT. Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons has convinced

mainstream economists that “collective” governance of the commons

can overcome the “tragedy of the commons” and “free-rider problems.”

Yet, a more systematic appraisal of Ostrom’s work shows that it

contains no concept of justice. Her idea of rights is extremely limited,

often tied to the notion of joint, rather than equal, rights. Indeed, for

Ostrom, the notion of the commons is socially separatist and not

ecological. Ostrom uses historical examples, but without analyzing

how common possession historically evolved and was undermined by

external forces. Hence her proposed “collective action” to save the

commons actually accelerates the real threats to the commons. A

strikingly different and more holistic approach to the commons is

offered by Henry George, who posits the commons as the most

important path to social, economic, and ecological sustainability.

Unlike Ostrom, who studied the commons “scientifically” to show that

some goods are neither private, public, nor club-based, George studied

the commons to understand and remove injustice at the roots. His

approach is more critical and certainly more relevant today in showing

that another world is possible. However, George’s work too, requires

significant changes to update its framing of the meanings, prospects,

and future of the commons.

Introduction

In his latest encyclical letter “Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Fran-

cis (2015) forcefully makes the case to reconsider the meaning,

*University of Technology Sydney, Asia-Pacific Centre for Complex Real Property

Rights, School of Built Environment, DAB, Peter Johnson Building, Sydney, Broadway,

NSW, Australia. Email: Franklin.Obeng-Odoom@uts.edu.au

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 75, No. 2 (March, 2016).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12144

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C2016 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

prospects, and future of the commons. “The growing problem of

marine waste and the protection of the open seas,” writes the Pontiff,

“represents par ticular challenges.” He continues: “What is needed, in

effect, is an agreement on systems of governance for the whole range

of so-called ‘global commons’” (Francis 2015: 128).

The lenses of the commons have always been a major window through

which heterodox economists have viewed the capitalist world system.

Indeed, some would begin their political economic analysis with the

(in)famous “enclosure of the commons,” drawing attention to or inspira-

tion from the accounts in Marx ([1867] 1990), Polanyi ([1944] 2001), or

Dobb (1946). However, modern analysis of the vitality of the commons

begins, indeed often ends, with the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the

Nobel Prize for her work on the commons, or, to be precise,“ for her anal-

ysis of economic governance, especially the commons.”

1

Although cred-

ited with offering the global and transdisciplinary analysis that decisively

showed the fallacies in Hardin’s (1968) “tragedy of the commons” (see,

for example, Harvey 2011), Ostrom’s work was best known in political

science, less well known in conventional economics, and almost entirely

unknown among heterodox economists. Her work (van Laerhoven and

Ostrom 2007) shows a strong bias in favor of conventional methodologies

based on rational individual actors. In turn, many heterodox economists

asked “Elinor who?” when her name was mentioned as the economics

Nobel Prize winner in 2009 (Stilwell 2012: 45).

However, since winning the prize, Ostrom has become the center of

much attention, with both orthodox and heterodox writers seeking to

appropriate her work. In Environmental Markets: A Property Rights

Approach, T. L. Anderson and G. D. Libecap (2014), two well-known

mainstream environmental economists who advocate private property

rights in nature, note: “Our understanding of how common property

institutions constrain over-harvest or over-extraction owes much to the

work of ...Elinor Ostrom” (Anderson and Libecap 2014: 94). For heter-

odox thinkers, the appeal of Ostrom appears to lie in the fact that she

wrote supportively of the commons, a holy grail of progressive schol-

ars. In turn, much academic scholarship in heterodox economics cites

Ostrom’s work favorably. The influential Cambridge economist

Ha-Joon Chang (2010: 609–610), for example, placed her among heter-

odox writers on institutions:

The Meaning, Prospects, and Future of the Commons 373

It is news to me that Ostrom has ever belonged to the orthodox institu-

tionalist circle. She is a political scientist who has mostly propagated her

ideas through books—that low-grade activity that orthodox economists

tend to despise. Most of her journal publications are, naturally, in politi-

cal science journals and most of the economics journals she has pub-

lished in were heterodox ones, that is, until she got the Nobel prize. The

reactions shown by young USA-based economists in the American Eco-

nomic Association’s job search website, www.econjobrumors.com, in the

days after the announcement for her Nobel prize are a very good, if

absolutely shocking, testament to the contempt in which she is held by

most mainstream economists.

In a special issue on Ostrom, published in the Journal of Institutional

Economics, the editor argues that her methodology, work, values, and

thinking make her more heterodox than orthodox (Hodgson 2013:

383). Similarly, in a special issue on common property in the Review of

Radical Political Economics, Christopher Dunn (2015) approvingly

uses Ostrom’s principles to organize his thoughtsabout the commons.

For rhetorical purposes, the embrace of Ostrom’s work may seem

effective. However, this article shows why heterodox economists ought

to be cautious, indeed wary, of uncritical endorsement of Ostrom’s

work. In spite of claims that there are overlaps between Ostrom’s meth-

odology and that of heterodox institutional economists (Hodgson

2013), Ostrom described herself as a “new institutional economist,”

which is a position entirely compatible with orthodoxy. She was not

affiliated with political economy or heterodoxy, and while she cites the

pioneers of institutionalism, such as John R. Commons, in her book

Governing the Commons (1990), the key influences on her are the new

institutional economists. The audiences she most enthusiastically

engaged were liberal and mainstream, rather than radical-heterodox

thinkers. Indeed, Ostrom gave the Hayek lecture in 2012, organized by

the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs in London (Ostrom 2012b).

“Ms. Elinor Ostrom,” wrote well-known Mexican activist, Gustavo

Esteva (2014: 147), “was a very sweet and dedicated lady. But she was

pretty ignorant. She lacked historical perspective and empirical infor-

mation about her theme,the commons.”

This article extends this critical perspective. It accepts that Ostrom

has convinced mainstream economists that “collective” governance of

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology374