Polycentricity

The study of polycentric systems lies at the heart of Vincent and Elinor (Lin) Ostrom’s work on governance and democracy, and forms the basis for the Bloomington School of Institutional Analysis and the empirical work undertaken at the Ostrom Workshop (https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/). The theoretical and empirical insights provided by the Ostroms and the Ostrom Workshop give scholars important alternative tools for institutional analysis. Polycentric theory provides the theoretical and normative basis on which some of the more empirically oriented tools that originated from the Workshop, such as the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) and Social-ecological systems (SES) frameworks, are based.