The report provides an accessible introduction to Nobel prize for Economics winner Elinor Ostrom’s work and the radical vision it offers for our current challenges. Described as the ‘intellectual hero of the community power movement’ it explores her decades long academic and practical research and how her ideas can be applied in the UK.
The report presents three key arguments from her work:
• Communities can manage their own resources: The Commons.
• Democracy is more meaningful at a local level: Self-governance.
• There are no one-size fits all solutions in complex social and environmental systems problems: Polycentricity.
Based on her analysis of the key design principles that underpin successful self-governing communities, three further core conditions for community power are identified as:
• Locality: Systems should be designed for specific places.
• Autonomy: The rights of communities to create and run local systems must be respected.
• Diversity: Each community is different and will take different approaches.
Read more here: Think-Big-Act-Small_