Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in EconomicsMass-cooperation is a term usually reserved for internet phenomena: wikipedia and couch-surfing are two common examples.  The idea of mass-cooperation flies in the face of received economic wisdom: that humans are rational and self-interested--or, as pro-regulation types interpret it: people are cold and selfish.  This is often expressed through the parable referred to as "The Tragedy of the Commons", the lesson of which is that people are too short-sighted to plan for the future, and, if given the opportunity, will use up all of their common-pool resources due to individual self-interest trumping group-consciousness.  The tragedy of the commons paradigm has been applied to both small-scale resource pools, such as local fisheries, and large-scale resource pools, such as the world's oceans.      

Nevertheless, the recent Nobel recognition of Elinor Ostrom, whose empirical research into common-pool-resource management turns the "tragedy of the commons" trope upside down, indicates that theories of mass-cooperation are finding a mainstream audience.  For years, evolutionary game-theorists such as John Maynard Smith and Brian Skyrms have been quietly chipping away at the wall between biology and economics while authority figures have continued to justify their own intrusion into collectively-owned and managed resources via the "tragedy of the commons" allegory.  The debate between the tragedy of the commons and mass-cooperation pits the narrative against the empirical, and while there is no doubt that the former is the sexier of the two, perhaps we should pay heed to the latter when formulating solutions for tricky, controversial topics.  Ostrom's discoveries could have radical implications on how we solve problems as diverse as welfare, aid for Africa, and climate change.

The message of mass-cooperation is clear: when a vested interest for sustainability exists, interested parties develop a sustainable management system.  For her Nobel Prize, Ostrom studied resource management worldwide: she found that sustainable systems developed spontaneously hundreds of years ago in Switzerland, Japan, the Phillipines and elsewhere and still function.  Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" for sustainable common pool resource management:

1.  Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties)

2.  Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions

3.  Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process

4.  Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators

5.  There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules

6.  Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access

7.  The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities

8.  In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level

From her research, Ostrom was able to conclude that:

Academics, aid donors, international nongovernmental organizations, central governments, and local citizens need to learn and relearn that no government can develop the full array of knowledge, institutions and social capital needed to govern development efficiently and sustainably...

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed, individuals can either "hunt hare" by themselves or "hunt stag" as a group.  Hunting stag requires a level of trust and cooperation, but has a far better payoff for success.  For this reason, in our early evolution, groups of humans who cooperated in "hunting stag" were better off than solitary humans who "hunted hare"; groups that cooperated well outcompeted groups that cooperated poorly, thus, humans cooperate naturally.

From hunting stag to wikipedia, cooperation is in our genes.  It's natural to leave the management of resources to those who have a vested interest in them, whether these resources are forests or votes.  This is why Federalism works and cold bureaucrats imposing order from Washington doesn't. 

Hat tip: John Stossel