Category Archives: civic theory

communities saving coral reefs: an illustration of Elinor Ostrom’s findings

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A new Nature article by Joshua E. Cinner and many coauthors entitled “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs” is getting a lot of play in mass media. The authors find that, despite grievous damage to coral reefs around the world, some reefs are doing much better than predicted. Among the causes of their success are local institutions and norms:

Our initial exploration revealed that bright spots were more likely to have high levels of local engagement in the management process, high dependence on coastal resources, and the presence of sociocultural governance institutions such as customary tenure or taboos. … For example, in one bright spot, Karkar Island, Papua New Guinea, resource use is restricted through an adaptive rotational harvest system based on ecological feedbacks, marine tenure that allows for the exclusion of fishers from outside the local village, and initiation rights that limit individuals’ entry into certain fisheries

According to economics before Elinor Ostrom, an unowned and unregulated resource is doomed because individuals will exploit it. A coral reef is a perfect example of an unowned resource; thus it must be enclosed and controlled by a private owner or a state to save it from the Tragedy of the Commons. But Ostrom found that communities around the world have developed durable means of protecting such resources for their own use. They apply tacit design principles for the successful management of what she called common pool resources, including clearly defined boundaries, rules for appropriating resources that are congruent with the local biological and cultural circumstances, practical means of monitoring the resource, and procedures that most people in the community have some capacity to influence.* Although the above description of Karkar Island is brief, it seems to manifest these principles.

Ostrom’s findings are profoundly significant, because all over the world, local institutions for protecting common pool resources have been bulldozed (metaphorically or literally) by states and markets. That form of modernization is one cause of our global ecological crisis. If more people were permitted–or even supported–to manage local resources as the Karkar Islanders do, the world would be in better condition.

It is also true–as the Nature authors emphasize–that deadly external threats beset local resources (in this case, coral reefs). As long as we heat the earth at a global scale, it’s virtually inevitable that many or most reefs will be destroyed, regardless of how local people manage them. But it’s a mistake to read Elinor Ostrom as a “Small-is-Beautiful” romantic. Her insight is that collective action problems are omnipresent, but they are not inexorable tragedies. They are “dramas” that can turn out either tragically or happily, depending on how we organize ourselves. The moral of her work is not that indigenous people can save the earth if left alone, but that institutions at all scales must learn to manage resources using the principles that happen to be traditional in places like Karkar Island.

*Ostrom et al., “Covenants, Collective Action, and Common-Pool Resources,” in The Constitution of  the Good Society, ed. Karol Edward Soltan and Stephen L. Elkin, 1996, pp. 23–38.

See also: Peter Levine, “Seeing Like a Citizen: The Contributions of Elinor Ostrom to ‘Civic Studies’” (The Good Society, 2011); Elinor Ostrom, 1933-2012; on the contributions of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom; and the cultural change we would need for climate justice.

being a friend to a project

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The other day, in the Summer Institute of Civic Studies, we were reading a long review article about Positive Youth Development (PYD). PYD can be described as a set of empirical hypotheses with supportive evidence (e.g., that youth flourish best when given opportunities to contribute to their communities). Alternatively, it could be defined as a set of value propositions that may or may not be empirical (e.g., youth have a right to contribute to their communities). It can also be described as a set of programs for young people. Those programs exist because of funding streams and other policies that can be categorized as PYD as well. And it’s a community of people–scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and maybe youth–who are involved with PYD.

Presented with an article, you can read it, learn from it, agree with it, criticize it, assess it, share it, cite it, even assign it. But you can’t be a friend of the article. It exists in its final form and can’t be influenced. It can have fans, but not friends in a recognizable sense of that word.

You can be a friend of something like PYD, assuming that it is a community of people or set of programs. Such a friendship can incorporate criticism–or even require it. For instance, I think PYD should be more political. Youth should have more opportunities to change official systems. I can say that as a friend of PYD, even as part of the PYD community. My friendship is predicated on a decision that PYD has potential, that it is worth engaging. My friendship does not depend on my assent to any particular list of hypotheses or principles, nor my endorsement of any particular program.

I say all of this for two reasons. First, academics learn how to relate to texts as critical readers. We are also supposed to learn how to relate to other scholars as people. But we learn less about how to be friends of communities or movements. Some of us are good friends (in that sense), but it’s not really part of our training.

Second, I think the relationship between empirical hypotheses and actually existing movements is widely misunderstood. It turns out to be true that many youth flourish when offered certain kinds of opportunities to contribute to their communities. That claim of PYD is true because a community of practitioners set about to create such opportunities and made them work. The knowledge that we have gleaned through research on PYD is a product of their efforts. This doesn’t mean that knowledge is subjective or relative. Some programs succeed, others fail, and we can measure the difference. But no program succeeds without being designed and implemented, which requires a prior commitment by some organized group.

The knowledge contained in an article about PYD is thus dependent on people’s work in the world. You can’t be a friend of the article, but you can be a friend of the people upon whom it depends. If the article contains a mistake, you should notice that. If the programs fail to work, you can help them to work better. A community can falter, splinter, or go in the wrong direction, but it can’t be invalidated. That means that a critical response to a publication is disagreement, but a critical response to a movement is action.

the eighth annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies begins

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Today begins the eighth annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts’ Tisch College of Civic Life. That means 7-8 hours of seminar discussion each day for two weeks, based on thousands of pages of readings. The syllabus is largely unchanged from last year. My co-conspirator in all of this work is Prof. Karol Soltan from University of Maryland.

Participants this year include two professors of philosophy, several community organizers and NGO leaders, and current PhD students in political science/political theory, developmental psychology, sociology, and geography. They come from the US, UK, Argentina, Ecuador, India, Pakistan, and Thailand.

The curriculum is unapologetically theoretical, even though most participants are selected because of their practical interests. As I’ve argued recently, our civic practices have outrun our theories. We have a lot of wisdom about how to organize a meeting or an advocacy campaign or what makes a good learning opportunity for youth. We have much less clarity about what all of that is for and how it relates to large-scale social conditions and political institutions. The 2016 Summer Institute won’t answer those questions definitively, but it’s a chance to struggle with them together.

citizen diplomacy

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(Dayton, OH) Since 1961, Russian and American citizens have met at 20 Dartmouth conferences to discuss the relationship between their two nations. This process continues now, even as NATO troops conduct a “massive airborne exercise in Poland,” practicing for a potential war with Russia in the heart of Europe. I’m proud to serve as a trustee of the Kettering Foundation, which has been one partner in sustaining the Dartmouth process for 55 years.

In one sense, any conversation between Russians and Americans would be a “citizens’ dialog.” For instance, presidents Putin and Obama are citizens of their respective nations, so when they have a phone call, two citizens are talking.

The Dartmouth conferences have not drawn statistically representative or typical people, but rather luminaries from each side. And although the participants are formally independent, they are often related to their respective governments in various ways. So if this is citizen diplomacy (and I think it is), we need to understand the word “citizen” in a particular sense.

Official representatives of governments can negotiate. They can agree to outcomes and either shake hands on the spot or at least take agreements back to their bosses for approval. As in any situation modeled by game theory, the parties have pre-established identities and objectives. The “players” know who they are (e.g., the US Trade Representative) and what they want. The outcomes of a negotiation can be good for all, or better for all than horrible alternatives, such as war. Negotiation is essential for peace. But the outcomes can also be suboptimal for everyone when situations like Prisoners Dilemmas arise, as they often do between states. Negotiations can break down completely. And even when the parties reach an agreement that satisfies them, their negotiation can be indefensible in principle or harmful to other parties.

In contrast, the participants in a citizens’ dialog are not empowered to represent their governments or make decisions. They may be influenced in myriad ways by their governments, but they have no opportunity to commit their governments to decisions. That change in the basic situation—which renders the participants “citizens”—also removes many of the constraints of game theory.

People who are not empowered to negotiate can explore a range of solutions that they might not want to commit to. They can choose from among their many identities: American, professor, Massachusetts resident, father, or citizen of the world. They can change their minds about what they want, or even talk without particularly wanting anything. They can disagree with people on their own “side,” since they are not serving on an official negotiating team. And they can develop and come to care about relationships with individuals from the other side, which has happened powerfully and repeatedly in the Dartmouth Conferences. At a minimum, they can come to understand better what people in the other country value and want, and that understanding can enable more productive negotiations between the states.

It’s not true that “to understand all is to forgive all.” People may genuinely and sincerely believe and value things they shouldn’t. That means that you can have a free and frank exchange of ideas (as they say in diplomacy) and still believe that the other side is badly misguided. Indeed, they may be badly misguided. On the other hand, there is usually some validity in any group’s perspective, and if nothing else, mutual understanding allows a relationship to develop. Once you care a bit about the other people, you’re less likely to endanger everyone. Social capital (trust and reciprocity) is repeatedly found to allow people to solve the kinds of problems modeled by game theory.

The current relationship between the US and Russia is complex and fraught. We are, for instance, backing different sides in a deadly civil war. Negotiations have virtually ceased. We also tend to have different grand historical narratives in our minds, in which the other country figures mostly as villain. Citizen dialog is therefore of the greatest importance today.

See also: the limits of putting yourself in their shoes and looking with their eyes; thoughts about game theory; the two basic categories of problems; and threats, negotiations, and deliberation: the case of the Syria crisis

seeing like a citizen

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(New York City)

How a state sees: A state establishes a boundary around its jurisdiction and counts and classifies the land, people, and property within that bound. The Lord tells Moses: “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls” (Numbers 1:2). Near the beginning of Luke, we are told, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” The emperor needed information, and the people complied: “All went to be taxed, every one into his own city” (Luke 2:1-3). And not long after William the Conqueror seized England, he “sent his men over all England, into every shire, and caused them to ascertain how many hundred hides of land it contained, and what lands the king possessed therein, what cattle there were in the several counties, and how much revenue he ought to receive yearly from each” (Giles 1914, A1085).

What is counted and categorized can be taxed and regulated–ideally, in the public interest rather than the self-interest of the state. In order for people to determine how their government acts, they too must be counted and categorized: as voters or non-voters, office-holders or independent citizens. Thus the state sees the people as data.

How a market sees: Objects have prices. So does an hour of a person’s time; and since time is the material of a life, life too is priced. Everything with a price is fungible. Anything without a price is invisible. Value is nothing but price, which is a function of several factors, including what people subjectively value or demand. Ultimately there is just one global market, although moving things across borders may have costs.

How a citizen sees: A citizen is someone who–to any degree–seeks to leave the world greater and more beautiful than she found it, to paraphrase the Athenian oath. That involves constantly judging the value of things, organizations, rules, and people. The citizen’s values are heavily influenced by what other people have taught her. But the list of her own judgments is unique, and she has the capacity to shift her own values. She also decides with whom to associate and what issues to address. At any given moment, her current interaction is likely to be bilateral (e.g., she’s reading an email from one person), but everyone has many bilateral relationships, producing a network in which the citizen sits. So her perspective is out into a network of which she is the center. In her vision, the state and the market tend to dissolve into actual people or groups who make decisions.

The citizen is committed to affecting the world. Some important phenomena may be beyond her grasp, so that she sees them but sees no way of changing them. But she is drawn to levers she can pull, handles she can grab onto. To choose an action, she combines value-judgments, factual beliefs, and tactical predictions into a single thought: “It is good for me to do this.”