Large N Comparative Studies of Ostrom's Design Principles

There have been a number of studies that focus on testing whether and in what contexts Ostrom's institutional design principles may lead to successful governance of common-pool resources.  The study of Cox et al. (see sources) coded the presence or absence of each of 8 design principles and success in 62 cases and found that the likelihood of success and the presence of individual design principles is positively correlated.   However, because institutions are systems, it is likely that well functioning SESs require clusters of design principles.  That is, looking at design principles in isolation does not tell us much about whether they are important for success. The study of Baggio et al. (see sources) recoded the same 62 cases from the Cox study to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions for clusters of design principles to lead to success and how these vary across sectors.

Each of the 62 cases of SESs used in these studies is included in the SES Library. Simply click on either of the bibliographic entries for Cox et al. or Baggio et al., and you will be taken to the document source page which lists the 62 cases which are then accessible from there.