Private Governance

Some of my research relates to private governance. These are ways people govern themselves and their resources outside of a governmental context. The research was inspired in part, by Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009. Williamson won for his exploration of the boundaries of the firm and his work on transaction costs. Ostrom for her work on collective action, trust, and cooperation in managing common pool resources.

Initially, the central inquiry initially was "How do people cover the costs of governance when they cannot resort to a tax system to fund it?" I began looking at private governance institutions to research the way people govern without government. My first work created a typology based on the functions that the various systems served: Innovations in Governance: A Functional Typology of Private Governance Institutions. A second article focused on voluntary certification systems, The Rise of Rule Four Institutions: Voluntary Standards, Certification and Labeling Systems.

This page will keep an archive of posts about private governance systems.