Elinor Ostrom
- Hayeon Kwak
- Aug 2, 2024
- 4 min read
“There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.”
— Elinor Ostrom
Born into a modest and simple family in California on August 7th, 1933, Elinor Claire Ostrom defied expectations and after 76 years of continuous and dedicated work, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009.
In her early childhood during the Great Depression, she experienced first-hand challenges of economic hardship, and especially her parents who are an artist and a set designer, helped her shape her views with a blend of creativity and problem solving, helping her see how the world works from a very young age. As she recalls, her childhood was spent “learning and doing the traditional activities of a girl” and would often find herself gardening, knitting for overseas soldiers or participating in competitive swimming.
Ostrom attended Beverly Hills High School, which was deemed for the posh and mainly consisted of children from wealthy families. And although she may not have ‘fitted in’ with her economic background, she made the best of the opportunity and participated very actively in speech and debate competitions all throughout her High School years which highly impacted her ways of thinking. And although none of her family members had attended college, her ambitions were unstoppable and Ostrom worked in the local library, bookstore, and dime store, which alongside the previously mentioned swimming helped her scrape up enough money to successfully study in UCLA for three years and get a bachelor's degree in political science.
After graduation, when looking for work, Ostrom was appalled to see that most employers were recruiting women to be secretaries or teachers. To face this, she took courses to learn Shorthand, and a year later she obtained the title of Assistant Personnel Manager at a business which had never hired a woman for anything more than a secretariat. This was one of her first experiences where she learned “not to take initial rejections as being permanent obstacles to moving ahead.” Shortly after, she wished to obtain a PHD yet both the economics and political science departments at UCLA were hesitant to accept her since as a woman in those times she would most likely end up working at a city college which ‘wasn’t ideal for building the reputation of the UCLA department”. Nevertheless, Ostrom was admitted into a class of 40 students alongside 3 women and received her PHD in political science.
Her work continued in Indiana University, where Elinor spent the first 15 years studying and researching Police industries around the United States. However, this field became rather inconclusive, therefore she returned to what she had previously studied in her college years: the governance of common pool resources (CPR), such as fisheries, forests, and water systems. Ostrom challenged conventional wisdom by investigating how local communities could successfully manage shared resources without the need for central government intervention or privatization. She conducted extensive fieldwork worldwide, examining irrigation systems in Nepal, fisheries in Maine, and forests in Africa. In 1990, her astonishing work was compiled in her seminal book called “Governing the Commons” that demonstrated that with proper governance structures communities could avoid the 'tragedy of the commons' (individuals acting in their own interests and deplete resources) therefore reshaping policies and previous academic thought on resource management.
From there, Ostrom continued to significantly impact the field of economics and beyond. She developed the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework, providing a comprehensive approach to studying interactions between human societies and ecological systems. And often would work closely with local communities to implement and test her theories. She published numerous influential works, including "Understanding Institutional Diversity" in 2005, and promoted interdisciplinary collaboration through her work at Indiana University's Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Not only did she inspire countless students and researchers as a dedicated teacher and mentor, but Ostrom also received numerous accolades, including the Johan Skytte Prize and the John J. Carty Award, and was elected to prestigious academic societies. Her work influenced global policies on sustainable development, and she contributed to international initiatives addressing environmental challenges.
In 2009, Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that Ostrom's "research brought this topic from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention...by showing how common resources—forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands—can be managed successfully by the people who use them rather than by governments or private companies''. And as with her previous financial prizes, she donated the winnings to the workshop she founded with her husband which became a pioneering center for interdisciplinary research, dedicated to studying how institutions function and evolve, especially in the context of managing common-pool resources
In her later years, Ostrom focused on climate change, advocating for collective action and local governance to address global environmental issues, solidifying her legacy as a pioneering thinker in economics and environmental governance. And even leading up to her passing in 2012, she kept working hard and even on the day of her death, she released her final article “Green from the grassroots”.
As society reflects on her remarkable career, Elinor Ostrom’s legacy acts as a testament to the power of innovative thinking and the critical role of community-driven solutions in addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Ostrom, a permanent source of inspiration, exemplifies how one person's innovative approach and unwavering dedication can leave a lasting imprint on both academic scholarship and real-world practices, empowering communities around the globe to achieve sustainable and equitable outcomes.
Written by Katrīna Anete Šveide
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