ABSTRACT
The 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to political scientist Elinor Ostrom for her work on a new model of collective action she calls the Commons. Within western capitalist democracies economists have posited that self-interest creates a ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ because individuals deplete shared resources for private gain (Hardin, 1968). In contrast, Ostrom and her colleagues draw attention to situations, where communities leverage trust and cooperation to develop and share ‘‘common-pool resources,’’ observing that, sometimes, traditional divisions between public and private are inaccurate (Bollier, 2007; Lessig, 2001). Among other things, Ostrom and colleagues examine how research-based knowledge can be shared as a common resource (Hess & Ostrom, 2007); informed by Ostrom’s model, this article highlights a statewide initiative focused on sharing the practical knowledge of community-based leaders.
