Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

In undisturbed ecosystems and traditional cultures, the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole. These systems and others are self-regulatory.

What makes a difference is redesigning the system to improve the information, incentives, disincentives, goals, stresses, and constraints that have an effect on specific actors.

Good economic institutions will encourage citizens to invest, accumulate, and develop new technologies, as a result of which society will prosper.

In a policy-resistant system with actors pulling in different directions, everyone has to put great effort into keeping the system where no one wants it to be. If any single actor lets up, the others will drag the system closer to their goals, and farther from the goal of the one who let go. In fact, this system structure can operate in a ratchet m