The contributors discuss the possibilities and dangers of scaling up and scaling down. They explore the impact of the number of actors and the degree of heterogeneity among actors on the likelihood of cooperative behaviour.
Elinor Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001; is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a recipient of the Frank E. Seidman Prize in Political Economy and the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. Her books include Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action; Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources (with Roy Gardner and James Walker); and Local Commons and Global Interdependence: Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Two Domains (with Robert Keohane).