Elinor Ostrom is a scientist who has devoted her life to the study of collective action problems. She has studied everything from allocation of public administration resources in urban areas to ideas about how to save lobster fishing in oceans across the globe.

As one of the world’s most famous political scientists – she holds the Arthur F. Bentley chair as a professor at Indiana University – she has been able to influence policymakers in numerous countries. Her career also includes elected positions like her years as the chairman of APSA , the American Political Science Association.

The surname seems almost all too Swedish for someone living in America. It is not without a reason. Her husband Vincent, himself an esteemed scholar, comes from a line of Swedish emigrants. Elinor, however, has been able to get well-acquainted with Scandinavia in her own right; she often visits Sweden to attend seminars and meet with colleagues.

During May, Ostrom came to Uppsala to receive her honorary degree at during the Linné festivities. And it certainly was not the first time she became lauded by the university. In 1999 she was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. As if this would not be enough, her name always seems to come up in the annual speculations about who will be the first woman to get The Sverige Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. (Another woman who seems to be mentioned every year is Anne Kreuger, who is famous for her research about rent-seeking and international trade.)

Ostrom’s inspiration and close connection with economic theory soon becomes apparent during the interview. A number of Nobel laureates are mentioned in passing as she tries to explain her research. However, she does not want to be viewed as someone who has a limited scientific scope in her academic approach, and she is convinced about the importance of theoretical pluralism.

This becomes obvious as soon as she launches a string of strong criticism against today’s methodological quagmire in the scientific community:

– I wrote my dissertation in 1965 at UCLA, and at that time James Buchanan’s and Gordon Tullock’s work, especially Calculus of Consent, were part of the theoretical inspiration. Joseph Schumpeter was of course also very important, trying to think through these things. Later on I was influenced by Garrett Hardin. I think he was conducting a very perceptive theory, he just over-generalized, and so I have evidence that he is right in some very specific cases. But I like pluralism, even when it comes to scientific theories. And so today I am more influenced by Douglass North. But the work in political economy has been very, very important. And Buchanan and Vernon Smith – all of those guys – have found so many interesting new ideas.

Ostrom’s mentioning of Hardin among scientists who have inspired her can hardly be overstated. His most famous scientific article, The Tragedy of the Commons, was published in Science in 1968. The problems relating to his paper has ever since become an almost intrinsic part of Ostrom’s approach to societal dilemmas: Well-founded analytical approaches to the study of institutions – rules and norms in society – are nowadays her scientific trademark. One of her latest contributions is the book Understanding Institutional Diversity which was published only a few years ago.

The theoretical problem which Hardin’s article tried to discuss has been haunting the scientific community ever since Aristotle and Plato: The use of any limited, common resources will continue until the marginal utility turns negative for the respective actors. The tragedy of the commons can be applied to any form of societal dilemma concerning limited resources in the world; fishing, clean air, fresh water. The solutions can consist of different sets of government interventions and regulations, negotiations between actors on a free market, or a combination of the two. In her perhaps most famous contribution, Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom is carrying out a detailed study where she dissects different ways in which to deal with problems relating to common pool resources and collective action.

An ever-present critical approach in her personality makes it very clear that she is not interested in viewing methodological approaches as scientific commanding heights. Rather, she wants to widen the approaches and argues that the institutional theories sometimes are allowed to become too idealistic. In an article in Scandinavian Politic Studies (from the year 2000) she writes: “Instead of one simple and general theory of collective action based on a narrow, rational-choice model of human behavior, social scientists are in the midst of developing a family of collective-action theories based on four general building blocks: (1) a broader theory of human behavior, (2) the study of multiple types of collective goods, (3) the attributes of groups that affect individual behavior, and (4) the study of diverse rules as they affect individual incentives and behavior”.

– I am very thankful that I had a great deal of economics as an undergraduate. I think it teaches you a way of thinking that is not always so strong in other parts of the social sciences. So I am immensely thankful, and it is extremely useful when we are dealing with pure private goods and market structures. Where it has not shown itself to be as powerful is in collective action, but it is very powerful in explaining highly competitive political events. So let us keep the theory where it works.

Ostrom seems to be looking to abridge scientific findings where others would like to keep them apart. Maybe the reason is because she is all too well aware of what it means to have to deal with bickering in the scientific community. Seven years ago the opposition within APSA reached its peak. What happened came to be labeled as the Perestroika crisis. Some influential members of APSA revolted against what they argued were too many quantitative and mathematical models presented by scholars in their own field.

When Ostrom received the prestigious James Madison Award by APSA, she decided to address the issue:

– I came clear with what I thought, that is to say that the social sciences must become more blended with each other. The Perestroika movement in political science was a critique that if it had not been presented in such an extreme fashion, it would have been a useful critique: Because there were quantitative survey researchers who were very arrogant, but so were many within the Perestroika movement. And I think we need more modesty, not arrogance. I try to train my students in a broad variety of methodological approaches; game theory is one very useful tool, and I also train them in heavy field research. The future exists in the possibility to fine-tune our instruments and not let existing definitions limit our scientific approach.

Even if Elinor Ostrom has been associated with numerous studies in many different empirical areas, her connection with environmental studies always seems to stand out. However, environmental debates about carbon trade and emission programs often seem to be full of misunderstandings, and Ostrom says she sometimes feels there is a great risk that important issues become tainted with bad reasoning. But she is an optimist and declares that a positive aspect of today’s ongoing debate over climate change and the Kyoto protocol is that awareness can be raised on a global level by just a few important contributions. When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962 she was able to set the tune for the coming environmental movement. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had the same kind of impact, 35 years later.

But what does she think about alarm reports that sometimes seem to dominate the news agenda? Is there a Knightean paradox of sort here? Does the public seem to misunderstand the difference between risk and uncertainty? Elinor Ostrom is nodding in agreement:

– Excellent. Yes. I think you are right. We have undervalued institutional diversity, in the name of saving biodiversity. We have learned that monocultures in agriculture are ecologically harmful. Monocultures are dangerous in that just one crop in a meadow leaves it open for, well… anything. The sad thing is that we still have not realized the importance of institutional diversity. We can not just say that the market is going to make everything alright, or that government bureaucracy will give us a sustainable development. We have to take the best out of the two systems and unite them in some way. A theory that only tries to find a pricing system is far too simplistic. Too much of today’s research is trying to find panaceas. And I think that panaceas are dangerous. Sometimes models become too purified and the, quote, details are not recognized. There is this English expression; the devil is in the details. And as scientists we need to realize that a property rights system based on a proportion of the yield is different from a property rights system where you have a fixed amount of tons. In New Zealand they have designed a fascinating system to regulate their fishing industry. It is based on lots and lots of trial and error. They could not end up with a defined tonnage, so they had the fishermen set up a number of tons based on their best estimates in a proportionate system. And that is quite a different formula than a fixed quota system. You now have property rights with some stability in the future. But just because it has succeeded in New Zealand does not mean that you can take the same solution and apply it just anywhere in the world. Every problem has unique details that have to be taken into consideration when one is looking for solutions.

Even if discussions about climate change may create controversy in a number of areas, Elinor Ostrom points out that the vast bulk of scientific evidence gives us no reason to question the human impact on our environment:

– The evidence that says there is human induced climate change is at this point very strongly supported. Will carbon trading and emissions programs be the solution to this? Maybe not if we limit ourselves to these ideas, but I argue that it is important to think in ways of institutional diversity and find different solutions. I have been working on an article about cap and trade and what we are proposing is an effort to try to get a cap that starts from current levels and moves down, and that the amount of carbon released has to be forced down to what the Stern report recommends. As the price of access to carbon goes up, the money that goes into the system should be put in a trust fund to address the issue of innovation. A serious effort should also be directed towards some redistribution so that the poorest people on the earth will get some of that. The trust fund should try to solve immediate problems. The people in China, for example, will not be able to do what you and I, and our forefathers did – to invest heavily in harmful energy production. It is hard to say to a young African child, or Asian, or even a Latin-American that my forefathers ruined the environment and we are not going to let you do the same. This approach is going to be very challenging, but I think there are ways in which to think about the cap and trade program in order to deal with this.

Some scientist still question many policy initiatives. In a recent op-ed in Financial Times, the Harvard economist Larry Summers argued that we have to have to bring climate idealism down to earth: “[T]he Kyoto approach depends on the questionable premise that nationals will, in fact, be bound by binding targets […] Carbon markets are invitations to engage in pork-barrel corporate subsidy politics on a massive scale. If greenhouse gas emissions are to be substantially reduced, the value of the associated emissions rights will be in the tens of billions of dollars…” Ostrom’s reply to Summers’ view is delivered without hesitation:

– I agree with the basic premise. The principles of Kyoto for example, did not take into account the problems of transaction costs; if trees are planted in x place what will be the impact if they grow in five years. It is important to get the details right and to find ways to implement these changes. Some programs for planting trees have done nothing of what they were set out to do. We should worry about that. But many supporters of that view then continue to say this means that we can not do anything, and that is where I do not agree. We have to do something and the most important policy issue is how we get a broad commitment to support a global initiative. How do you get a fund going that is not being administered by a government? It would have to be an international fund, and so it is obvious that we have to solve this on an international level and give authority to an international body that is not a national government.

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She is hesitant to declare victory in the quest for solutions to any environmental problem. She keeps reiterating that the devil is in the details. When asked if she would be willing to describe some success stories in the world of collective action problems, Ostrom is nevertheless fast to reply:

– In Maine the lobster industry is doing well, because lobster fishing is a lot different from other areas of fishing. You can mark them in a reliable way and you can notch a lobster on its tail. With fish you can not mark and toss it back in the same way. And the state of Maine has allowed local fishermen in a local bay a lot of autonomy and allowed them with some experimentation. Now there is a zone arrangement, and they have had this going on for a very long time and people have started trusting one another, and that is very important. They will not allow outsiders to ruin their lobster waters. That is truly a great success story.

Should scientist take part in political debates and take sides on hot-button issues? Although her scientific findings may provoke political responses Elinor Ostrom does not believe that there are intrinsic values to be had from diluting the difference between science and public policy:

– I don’t think there is one way of answering that one. As for me, personally, I do not want to impose my view on anybody else. I have felt like the world is uncertain enough. But there are exceptions. In a few cases, however, the evidence is so strong that I have spoken out. There is, for example, enough evidence gathered about the lack of economies of scale in relations to education and policing in metropolitan areas. Economies of scale only seem to appear in transportation networks, but not in other administrative areas.

This effect is what economists refer to as Baumol’s cost disease – the price of some labor-intensive services will keep on rising when the product itself is strongly dependent on the quantity of employees. And so our conversation goes on, with Ostrom continuously pointing out economic models that she finds interesting or empirical fields that she is fascinated by. Throughout the interview, Elinor Ostrom keeps on smiling. She seems genuinely pleased about discussing her own research as well as other scientists’ findings. She wrote her dissertation 42 years ago and it does not seem like she is planning to slow down anytime soon. Her personal filofax is fully booked for more than a year in advance. It does not seem to bother her. The way she replies to my last question becomes characteristic for her personal approach. I want to know if she has been able to get an overview of her own impact within the social sciences, so I ask: “Have you ever pondered about the immense impact your research has had on the scientific community?”

– No, I still have work to do … (laughter) and it is just not my style.

Joakim Nilsson is a freelance journalist.