Repositorio
The Ostroms and the Contestable Nature of Goods: Beyond Taxonomies and Towards Institutional Polycentricity
Título
The Ostroms and the Contestable Nature of Goods: Beyond Taxonomies and Towards Institutional Polycentricity
Código de publicación
- AD-00053
Autores/as
- Veeshan Rayamajhee and Pablo Paniagua
Clave
- Artículo de investigación
Colaboradores/as
Claves o descriptores
Descripción
- This paper builds on the Ostroms' oeuvre to suggest that the binary Samuelsonian taxonomy of goods – or the ‘sterile dichotomy’, as Elinor Ostrom calls it – cannot serve as a reliable guide for public policy. Using the Ostroms' insights on co-production, institutional matching, and polycentricity, we argue that the ‘inherent’ nature of goods and their specific taxonomy are not static and definitive concepts but are instead contestable and dynamic features that are institutionally contingent. We explore four crucial mechanisms and/or contexts, not altogether unrelated, whereby the nature of goods becomes contestable and malleable: namely, (1) technological and geographical factors, (2) coproduction and entrepreneurial ingenuity, (3) bundling and unbundling of services, and (4) ideologies and regime shifts. This exercise has twofold purposes. First, we generalize the notion that there is nothing ‘inherent’ in the nature of goods and services and that they are fluid, heterogeneous, and malleable concepts. Second, we contribute to the debate on the provision of public goods and the role of civil society by highlighting the need for institutional malleability and diversity adaptive to changing technology, contexts, and institutional conditions.
Localización
Revista | libro
- Journal of Institutional Economics, 17(1): 71-89.
Idioma
- Inglés
Editor
- Cambridge Core
Año de publicación
- 2020
Formato
Identificador (ISBN/ISSN)
DOI o URI/URL
- doi:10.1017/S1744137420000338
Derechos
- Abiertos
Fichero
- Disponible