Getting started with polycentric governance
Polycentric Governance (or PG for short) is a core pillar of the Bloomington School of Political Economy (or Institutional Analysis).
The basic idea is simple: many tasks need to be completed if societies are to define acceptable modes of behavior by individuals and collective entities acting within that society. In practice, the processes of governance are exceedingly complex, since completion of all the necessary tasks requires the participation not only of public officials acting in their official capacity, abut also private corporations, professional associations, non-profit organizations, community leaders and individual citizens.
In this series of video presentations, Mike McGinnis, a senior research fellow and former co-director of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, highlights the most important simple ideas that help us make sense of this complexity.
These videos may be watched in any order, but if you’re new to this concept you should start with the first two.
- What is Polycentric Governance? A Quick Answer
- A Few Key Examples – PG in Theory and Practice
- Emergence is Not Enough – PG Sustainability and Distributed Stewardship
- A PG by Any Other Name? Popular Aliases for Polycentric Governance
- Breaking Bad – Exploring the Dark Side of Polycentric Governance
- Defining Polycentricity and Other Dilemmas of Governance Science