POL 104 - SG # 2 - Study Guide Lec 2 PDF

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Study Guide Lec 2...

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Lecture #2 Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” ● Resources are finite, therefore population growth must eventually equal zero ● Bentham’s goal of “the greatest good for the greatest number” is thus impossible ● “If our goal is to maximize population it is obvious what we must do: We must make the work calories per person approach as close to zero as possible. No gourmet meals, no vacations, no sports, no music, no literature, no art…” p. 1243 ○ Note: a “work calories is any energy expended on anything other than activities necessary to sustain life) ● The heart of the tragedy is that each herdsman seeks to maximize his/her gain from grazing cows on a commonly held pasture. His/her calculation is related to the gain to be realized by adding one cow to their own herd ○ If they can earn a profit, they add the cow to their herd. And they keep the entire profit ○ At the same time, if the efficiency of the commons is reduced, the cost is shared among all users ○ The logic proceeds so that each individual herdsman keeps adding cows until the commons is inevitably degraded and ruined ○ “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” p. 1244 ● Other examples: ○ National parks ○ Freeways ○ Pollution ● Solutions: ○ Privatizing the commons ○ Legislation solutions by taking account of context: “the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.” p. 1245 ○ Is the freedom to breed really intolerable? ○ Why might conscience be self-eliminating? ○ The pathogenic effects of conscience: ■ You will be condemned if you abuse the commons, but ■ Will you feel like a sucker if you are the only one who doesn’t? ○ Are there costs to centralization through “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon”?

Elinor Ostrom’s “The Danger of Self-Evident Truths” ● “The presumption that large numbers of small governmental units serving a metropolitan area produce inadequate, inefficient, and inequitable services has

been widespread throughout this century. Its converse - that big, centralized governments are more professional and offer economies of scale in the production of public goods and services - has been considered to be similarly obvious. But are these assumptions correct?” p. 33 ● “A second example illustrates the way in which self-evident truths can be multilayered. In earlier times, local natural resources such as forests, grazing areas, fisheries, and water were accessible and abundant, allowing individuals to cut, pasture, gather, and drink whatever they needed. Common sense suggested that these resources were not only plentiful but also renewable, and each person was free to take whatever was needed. But growing populations strained these freely available resources. New self-evident truths emerged. Users were perceived to be trapped in a “tragedy of the commons,” unable to extract themselves from perverse incentives leading to overuse. Thus, it was thought, national governments needed to impose new institutions on those trapped in a race to use up resources. Based on this common prescription, officials in many countries nationalized the ownership of these resources in an effort to save them from destruction, only to find that the reforms exacerbated overuse rather than reducing it.” p. 33 ● “Both of these examples suggest a general principle underlying recent governmental reforms. Individuals tend to believe that highly decentralized or polycentric systems are by their very nature disorderly and ineffective. Order is presumed to result from central direction. This common-sense assumption, however, leads to proposals to improve the operation of political systems that have had the opposite effect. By consistently taking the power to make decisions about the ways to innovate, adapt, and coordinate efforts away from those who are directly affected, policymakers have created institutions that are less able to respond to the problems they were created to address.” p. 33 ● The Monocentric Theory of the Political System (p. 34) ○ Urban public goods and services are relatively homogeneous and similarly affect all neighborhoods within a metropolitan area. ○ Urban voters share relatively similar preferences for urban goods and services. ○ Voters can effectively articulate their preferences for urban goods and services through one electoral mechanism ○ Elected officials can effectively translate citizen preferences into policy objectives assigned to public bureaus and determine tax rates for producing the revenue needed to achieve these objectives

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○ Heads of public bureaus have effective command over street-level bureaucrats, who produce the highest level of public goods and services given the budget they receive ○ Street-level bureaucrats deliver goods and services to passive clients.” p. 34 The Polycentric Theory of the Political System (p. 35) ○ Urban public goods and services differ substantially in regard to their production functions and their scale of effects ○ Individuals with relatively similar preferences for public goods and services tend to cluster in neighborhoods. Preferences will tend to be more homogeneous within neighborhoods than across an entire metropolitan area ○ Citizens who live in multiple jurisdictions learn more about the performance of any one jurisdiction by seeing or hearing about how problems are handled in other jurisdictions ○ Multiple jurisdictions with different scopes and scales of organization allow citizens to better make effective choices when selecting packages of services most important to them, to better articulate their preferences and concerns, and, if necessary, to move to other jurisdictions ○ The presence of large numbers of potential producers of urban goods and services in a metropolitan area allows elected officials to make more effective selections when choosing producers ○ Producers who must compete for contracts are more likely to search for innovative technologies, to operate at close to optimal scales of production, and to encourage effective team production, as well as co-production, so as to enhance” p. 35 The Absence of a “One Best System” for Political Problems Resource attributes increasing the likelihood of self-organization are: ○ “Feasible improvement: Resource conditions are not at a point of deterioration such that it is useless to organize or so underutilized that little advantage results from organizing ○ Indicators: Reliable and valid indicators of the condition of the resource system are frequently available at a relatively low cost ○ Predictability: The flow of resource units is relatively predictable ○ Spatial extent: The resource system is sufficiently small, given the transportation and communication technology in use, that appropriators can develop accurate knowledge of external boundaries and internal microenvironments.” p. 40 Appropriator attributes associated likelihood of self-organization are:

○ Salience: Appropriators are dependent on the resource system for a major portion of their livelihood or other important activity ○ Common understanding: Appropriators have a shared image of how the resource system operates and how their actions affect each other and the resource system. ○ Low discount rate: Appropriators use a sufficiently low discount rate in relation to future benefits to be achieved from the resource ○ Trust and reciprocity: Appropriators trust one another to keep promises and relate to one another with reciprocity. ○ Autonomy: Appropriators are able to determine access and harvesting rules without external authorities countermanding them. ○ Prior organizational experience and local leadership: Appropriators have learned at least minimal skills of organization and leadership through participation in other local associations or studying ways that neighboring groups have organized. p. 40...