Elinor Ostrom: “A Magnificent and Irreplaceable Treasure”

Abstract

[Author Affiliation]Rick K Wilson, * Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, MS 24, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA; E-mail: rkw@rice.edu .Catherine C Eckel, [dagger] Sara & John Lindsey Professor, Department of Economics, Texas AM E-mail: ceckel@econmail.tamu.edu .[Acknowledgment]Thanks to Haley Harwell (Texas AM instead, she drew upon the many ways in which locally organized individuals solved social dilemmas to argue for a decentralized, individualized approach. For her many coauthors, she was an indefatigable force. For her many students, she was an inspiration and an endless source of information and ideas. For those who met her, Lin was infectiously exuberant, down-to-earth, and capable of finding something important to discuss with anyone she encountered. At a reception in her honor at the Southern Economic Association Meetings in 2010, she was standing in a corner by herself for a few moments until the graduate students discovered her. Suddenly, she was surrounded by students asking myriad of questions to which she was happy to reply, and, as always, she pressed the students about their own research.Lin believed in the power of institutions and built a long-lasting example of her own. In 1973, Lin and Vincent founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (affectionately known by participants as Camp Wopotopa). The Workshop brought scholars from a variety of disciplines together to work jointly on projects. Its primary goal was to bridge the world of ideas with the world of practical policy advice. The Workshop provided an intellectual center around which undergraduate and graduate students could learn the research process, faculty could elaborate new ideas, and visitors could come to share in the intellectual enterprise. Over the years, it became a large extended, intellectual family that had the breadth exhibited by Lin's work. The Workshop was central to Lin's work, and we return to it later.Lin's BackgroundLin grew up in Los Angeles, California, and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from UCLA in political science. From the beginning, Lin was interested in studying economics, but she was strongly discouraged from doing so. Undergraduate advisors told her that women did not have the appropriate aptitude for math and rigor demanded by economics. Instead, she was encouraged to go into political science where the demands were not as high. …