American Philosophical Society
Member History

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1Name:  Dr. Elinor Ostrom
 Institution:  Indiana University
 Year Elected:  2006
 Class:  3. Social Sciences
 Subdivision:  304. Jurisprudence and Political Science
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1933
 Death Date:  June 12, 2012
   
 
Elinor Ostrom's pioneering scholarship, for which she won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, provided a compelling framework for understanding collective action, resource management, property rights, and institutional design. Her work reached across disciplinary lines to deal with some of society's most vexing social problems - poverty, inequality, and sustainability - combining game theory, laboratory experimentation, field study, and institutional analysis. Her seminal publication, Governing the Commons, notes that rational choice theory predicts that without external intervention people will over-use common pool resources (CPRs) such as fisheries or irrigation water. In fact, many communities manage their commonly shared resources collectively. Through field research from Nepal to Mexico to Los Angeles, she explored successful and unsuccessful CPR institutions, offering a theory of institutional choice that has fundamentally changed how social scientists think about collective action, institutional choice and self-governance. This work shows how people can resolve dilemmas of collective action without external coercion. Scientifically, she triggered a productive dialogue between formal theorists and empirical field researchers, and she applied her analytical approach to an ever-wider set of immediate practical problems and human experiences around the globe. From 1973 to 2009 Dr. Ostrom was the Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, then served as the Senior Research Director until her death. Additionally, she had been the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University since 1973. She recevied a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (1965). In 2010 she was awarded the University Medal from Indiana University and the rank of Distinguished Professor. Elinor Ostrom died on June 12, 2012, at the age of 78, in Bloomington, Indiana.
 
Election Year
2006 (1)