POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM
28
the Cuautla and Nexapa Rivers) Palerm and
collaborators explore the relevance of formal
and informal institutional arrangements within
river basins and associated irrigation districts.
Ostrom’s work has also been applied to the
study of fisheries management worldwide,
and Mexico is well represented here (Basurto
et al., 2012; Cinti, Shaw, Cudney-Bueno &
Rojo 2010; Ibáñez de la Calle, Becerra Pérez
& Brachet Barro 2004; Morán-Angulo 2012;
Ortiz Paniagua 2004; Zepeda Domínguez
2010). Basurto’s work, in particular, is relevant
as it draws directly from the Ostrom school
of institutional analysis (Professor Basurto
was a student of Lin’s). In his studies of two
Mexican small-scale fisheries in the Gulf of
California, Mexico, he found broad divergences
in how communities access and govern fish as
a resource. While one community used a CPR
regime approach, the other continued to rely
on permits as a policy strategy (Basurto et al.,
2012), showing that both formal and informal
rules and institutions both have a direct
effect on the effectiveness of the resource
governance regime.
Beyond these more resource-specific fields
of scholarship (water, fisheries and forestry),
Ostrom’s work on the commons (particularly
her study of rules and institutions in self-
governing systems) has also been applied
more broadly to the governance of Mexico’s
extensive resource commons. Her early 1990s
work, which dealt with agrarian issues, is
well suited to the study of Mexican ejidos—
land-based tenure systems managed by
small-scale resource appropriators that share
characteristics of both common and private
property. For example, Schroeder Gonzalez
undertook an applied study of ecosystems
within the Chamela-Cuxmala ejidos (Schroeder
Gonzalez 2006), and reported that institutions
for resource conservation were lacking and
indicative of a loss of social cohesion and social
capital in the communities under study—a
finding that resonated strongly with Ostrom’s
view that self-governing communities need to
develop long-range, robust, and cooperative
institutional arrangements to ensure resources
are not degraded by the actions of narrow-
minded, short-sighted appropriators.
Finally, any review of Ostrom’s impact on
Mexican commons scholarship is incomplete
without reference to the Mexican social
science journal Relaciones, which dedicated
a entire volume in 2002 to the application
of Ostrom’s work to understanding local
self-governance and the commons in Mexico
(Roth Seneff 2002). This was something of a
pioneering move, given that Ostrom’s 2005
Understanding Institutional Diversity
book was
yet to be published, and she was still 7 years
away from being awarded the Nobel Prize.
The volume summarized mostly theoretical
work but did include some empirical studies
on water allocation in Izucar de Matamoros in
northern Mexico, and forestry management
in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve
in Michoacan, comparing governance of
forest resources there with those found in
Oaxaca, southern Mexico. The standout piece,
however, was written by Silvia Bofill Poch, who
explored community forestry in the indigenous
community of San Juan Parangaricutiro
in the Purhepecha altiplano (Bofill-Poch,
2002). In her article, Bofill Poch looked at the
articulation (or lack thereof) and nesting of
political institutions, social norms and power
struggles that have reinforced class struggles
and conflicts between governments at multiple
scales and forestry community users. In the
same vein as Ostrom’s work on self-governing
irrigation units, Bofill Poch shows the
myriad conflicts that can stem from perverse
incentives and a lack of robust institutional
structures tend to perpetuate negative effects
on resources governance.
HOW OSTROM’S WORK HAS
INFLUENCED POLICY: THE CASE OF
WATER GOVERNANCE
Within the context of setting new regulatory
standards for water governance in Mexico,
bureaucrats and scholars alike have used
Ostrom’s common pool resource (CPR) theory
as an all-encompassing framework to allow
for innovative institutional reforms to be
implemented in a relatively straightforward
fashion. In addition, because the vast majority
of Mexican scholarship on water governance
focuses on water allocation, redistribution
and equitable sharing, Ostrom’s research
POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM
29
findings are easily applied to Mexican case
studies dealing with access to water. In my
own research, I have departed from analyzing
water access to focus more on the rules and
institutions governing wastewater generation,
distribution and treatment (Pacheco-Vega
& Basurto 2008; Pacheco-Vega,2005, 2009,
2012c). Using a comparative analysis of the
sanitation policies of five Mexican States,
Ostrom’s work has helped me to demonstrate
that when institutional reforms such as river
basin councils are not robust enough, they
can be detrimental to building a potentially
sustainable basin-wide sanitation policy.
Lin Ostrom’s teachings were much broader
than just a mere list of 8 design principles for
good commons governance. Unfortunately,
the recent popularization of her scholarship
(following her 2009 Nobel Prize for
Economics) have sprouted hundreds of
notes, newspaper and magazine articles on
her research that tend to narrow her major
achievements down to these very principles.
As others papers in this special issue show,
doing so negates the many contributions of
Lin Ostrom’s intellectual heritage. This is
no less the case with water governance in
Mexico. In reviewing how her contributions
have been used by scholars to understand
water governance in the country, three
insights in particular should be considered.
First, Lin Ostrom’s research demonstrated
that communities are indeed capable of self-
organizing for sustainable water governance.
Taking her previous empirical work on
Spanish huertas, and applying it to Mexican
cajas de agua
, Palerm and collaborators have
shown that communities are capable of self-
organizing to improve conditions in their
irrigation systems. Second, Ostrom’s insights
on rule and norm design have helped improve
Mexican water governance by highlighting the
importance of robust institutions designed
from the bottom-up. As an example of this, my
work demonstrates how Mexican river basin
councils can fail when institutional erosion
occurs because of a conflict between policy
objectives and overlapping jurisdictional
attributions (Pacheco-Vega 2013a). And third,
Lin Ostrom’s contribution to our understanding
of the notion of resource governance itself
has been extremely influential in Mexican
water policy. As an example, the past couple
of years have seen a flurry of works published
that stressed the need to devolve control to
communities as one of the necessary pillars of
future water governance in Mexico (COLMEX,
CONAGUA, IMTA, & ANEAS 2012).
Taking Ostrom’s insights on decentralization as
a main tenet of resource governance, Mexican
water policy is slowly but surely moving in this
direction. Her research has been influential
in the design of the Mexican National Water
Law (Ley de Aguas
Nacionales
),
where changes
have seen greater
emphasis placed
on community
participation in
order to build
resilient and robust
institutions for
water governance.
Similarly,
Ostrom’s work
on institutional
diversity and her
emphasis on multi-
layered forms of
governance have
opened up policy
discussions at the national level to increase the
perceived value of polycentric arrangements
and to test their feasibility at the sub-national
level. Last year, Mexico’s National Water
Commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua,
CONAGUA) convened a policy workshop
sponsored by the OECD (Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development)
where discussions around polycentricity and
water governance in Mexico were held. These
constituted important conversations involving
the country’s policymakers, and they were
informed, in part, by Ostrom’s thinking.
Officials at all three levels of government
are now looking to improve the institutional
design of river basin councils and river basin
organisations. The results to date have been
mixed, with both successful (the Lerma-
Chapala river basin), and not-so-successful
Lin Ostrom’s
research
demonstrated
that
communities
are indeed
capable of self-
organizing for
sustainable
water
governance.