Going beyond panaceas
- Elinor Ostrom*,†,‡,§,¶,
- Marco A. Janssen‡,§, and
- John M. Anderies‡,§
- *Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, 408 North Indiana Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47408;
- †Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 513 North Park, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408; and
- ‡School of Human Evolution and Social Change and
- §Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
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Edited by B. L. Turner II, Clark University, Worcester, MA, and approved August 7, 2007 (received for review March 1, 2007)
Abstract
In the context of governance of human–environment interactions, a panacea refers to a blueprint for a single type of governance system (e.g., government ownership, privatization, community property) that is applied to all environmental problems. The aim of this special feature is to provide theoretical analysis and empirical evidence to caution against the tendency, when confronted with pervasive uncertainty, to believe that scholars can generate simple models of linked social–ecological systems and deduce general solutions to the overuse of resources. Practitioners and scholars who fall into panacea traps falsely assume that all problems of resource governance can be represented by a small set of simple models, because they falsely perceive that the preferences and perceptions of most resource users are the same. Readers of this special feature will become acquainted with many cases in which panaceas fail. The articles provide an excellent overview of why they fail. Furthermore, the articles in this special feature address how scholars and public officials can increase the prospects for future sustainable resource use by facilitating a diagnostic approach in selecting appropriate starting points for governance and monitoring, as well as by learning from the outcomes of new policies and adapting in light of effective feedback.
Footnotes
- ¶To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ostrom{at}indiana.edu
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Author contributions: E.O., M.A.J., and J.M.A. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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↵ ‖ Socio-ecological systems (1), social–ecological systems (2), and coupled human–environmental systems (3) are commonly used in the literature to describe systems of human–environment interactions.
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↵ ** Economists recently have begun to call into question the presumption that privatization is a panacea and the only way to protect the commons (17–19). In contrast to panacea thinking, solid empirical studies of diverse property-rights systems have been undertaken by Eggertsson (20), Libecap (21, 22), Libecap and Wiggins (23), Blomquist et al. (24), and Acheson (25).
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↵ †† We thank Scott Page for pointing out these two basic errors of panacea thinking (personal communication, October 2, 2006).
- Abbreviation:
- SES,
- social–ecological system.
- © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
