Almost. I have sent a full draft following external feedback and review (next stage: copy-editing). All going well, it will be out in November 2019.
I have included below some sample chapters (and each chapter should also have its own entry (or multiple entries) in the 1000 Words and 500 Words series).
Chapter 1 Intro UPP 2nd ed 18.5.19
Chapter 13 Conclusion UPP 2nd ed 25.5.19
New references UPP 2ND ed 27.5.19
Think of the SES framework as the combination of:
The result is a framework that resembles CPR studies in key respects. Ostrom’s 2009 article in Science provides a visual emphasis on the interactions between ‘first-level’ concepts including users, their governance system, resource system (such as a protected park) and resource units (such as its trees):
It also raises similar questions, such as ‘When will the users of a resource invest time and energy to avert “a tragedy of the commons”’?
It answers them with reference to ‘second level’ concepts describing factors that encourage users to (a) value long term sustainability and (b) self-organize to secure this outcome. This table summarizes many of them:
Note that Ostrom describes their effect as indicative because, ‘As in most complex systems, the variables interact in a nonlinear fashion …Simple blueprint policies do not work’.
As a result, we have a super-complicated framework to help us understand an even more super-complicated world. For some, the SES framework serves to ‘diagnose’ the sustainability of social-ecological systems and explore the prospect of more effective self-organisation to manage resources. However, as with the IAD, effective use of the framework itself requires a fair amount of immersion in the language of analysis.
See also:
Policy in 500 Words: Ecology of Games
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: it’s time for some game theory
Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Rational Choice and the IAD (the older post for the 1st edition)
Policy Concepts in 100 Words: Multi-centric Policymaking
How to Navigate Complex Policy Designs
How can governments better collaborate to address complex problems?
Filed under 500 words, public policy
These posts introduce you to key concepts in the study of public policy. They are all designed to turn a complex policymaking world into something simple enough to understand. Some of them focus on small parts of the system. Others present ambitious ways to explain the system as a whole. The wide range of concepts should give you a sense of a variety of studies out there, but my aim is to show you that these studies have common themes.
A series of lectures on policymaking, written up as blog posts with further reading.
