From Goods to Orders and Rules of Governance: A Preliminary Exploration

The purpose of this work is to bring into more explicit contact the theory of commons as developed by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators with the theory of order as developed by Friedrich A. von Hayek. We do so by shifting emphasis from analyzing different types of goods in terms of their intrinsic properties, to goods being analyzed in terms of how the intrinsic properties lead to extrinsic consequences in terms of different governance solutions. Our preliminary considerations suggest that Ostrom and Hayek are complementary when it comes to considering governance solutions. Ostrom’s rules for the management of the commons complement Hayek’s distinction between orders with abstract and specific rules. Governance is about differences in kinds of rules as much as it is about degrees of rules.