Elinor Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” In particular, Ostrom identified a third realm of voluntary common governance of commons and voluntary provision of public goods that is in between the coercive action of the state and individualized market exchange. Ostrom, along with her husband Vincent Ostrom, co-founded the Ostrom Workshop and Bloomington School of Political Economy at Indiana University, which explores the potential and limits of spontaneous and polycentric governance of social and political institutions.
This Workshop for Law Professors explored the intellectual history of the Ostroms and the Bloomington School, the core elements of its scholarly insights, and the ideas of the Bloomington School as a positive research program, especially as applied to law.