[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Garth Graham [mailto:garth.graham at telus.net]
> 
> Elinor Ostrom identified eight "design principles" of stable common pool
> resource management systems.  In her terms, a means of governing open
> Internet standards or the DNS as a common pool resources (CPR) would
> need to include:

[Milton L Mueller] Thanks, GG. Someone actually did their homework. ;-)

> 1.     Clearly defined boundaries about who is in and who is out
> (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);

[Milton L Mueller] Right. So the idea that common pool governance means warm and fuzzy communalism goes out the window real fast. Common pool governance involves exclusion no less than private property rights. E.g., if you try to swim in certain beaches on the coast of New Jersey in the U.S., you will find that they are common pool governed by the local community, and if you are not a member of that community, you are excluded. 

> 2.     Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common
> resources are adapted to local conditions;

[Milton L Mueller] And these rules are necessary when transactions costs or other problems make it impossible or highly costly for markets based on property rights to do the same job. It is silly to assert that commons or private property are morally inferior or superior to each other; what matters is how well they allocate resources. 

> 3.     Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators
> to participate in the rules-making and decision-making processes;

[Milton L Mueller] That is more of a norm than a fact: Ostrom argues that collective choice arrangements _should_ allow most appropriateors to participate, but does not assert that as a matter of fact they always do.

> 4.     Effective monitoring of operational conformance by monitors who
> are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
> 5.     A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who
> violate community rules;
> 6.     Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap, local, and of easy
> access;
> 7.     Unchallenged recognition of the community's self-determination by
> higher-level authorities;
> 8.     In the case of larger common-pool resources, organization in the
> form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at
> the base level.

[Milton L Mueller] Yes. These are the conditions for effective common pool resource governance that Ostrom spelled out. An essential supplement to this discussion, however, is that we only need common pool governance in the first place when the resource space being governance meets certain criteria; to wit: it is rival in consumption but also difficult or very costly to fence in. Ostrom has no quarrel with markets based on exchanges of private property if the resource in question is a private good. 


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