UPDATED Paper & Panel submission deadline: Oct. 15th, 2023
For any questions contact: wow@iu.edu
Commons, Polycentricity, & Democracy: Building upon 50 years of Ostrom Governance Research
During the 50 years of existence of the Ostrom Workshop, the challenges of effective governance have become vastly more complex and transboundary in nature. Recent trends of increased regionalism and autocracy have tested the effectiveness of governance institutions at all levels. Increased political polarization compounds these challenges, constraining and often undermining more participatory forms of governance.
Yet, at the same time, successful efforts to manage diverse commons and public goods have also become apparent across sectors and around the world. The community of scholars exploring governance and institutions for the management of a wide range of resource systems has grown to include new approaches, methodologies, and issue areas. Beyond the historical analysis of natural resource systems and the environment, new frontiers of governance, such as data, knowledge, outer space, health, internet, and cities have become part of the dynamic scholarship emerging in this space.
- How are existing governance institutions, as well as our approaches to studying them, adapting to new challenges?
- How are the autocratic and regionalist trends shaping the range of governance institutions available to address emerging challenges?
- What analytic advances can aid in bridging vastly different research and practice in addressing governance and institutional challenges and how can they facilitate communication with policy makers and the public?
Held every five years since 1994, the seventh Workshop on the Ostrom Workshop (WOW7) conference will bring together researchers, students, and alumni from the Ostrom Workshop to reconnect and meet new colleagues and to explore a diverse range of topics and new approaches to the study of governance and institutions. The conference theme -- Commons, Polycentricity, and Democracy -- foregrounds the challenges of managing commons and public goods, as well as advancing globally shared goals for sustainable development and the peaceful management of existing and frontier resource systems, at a time of accelerated and conflicting social, environmental, and political changes.
We are, therefore, now inviting panels and papers that will explore, advance, and reflect upon the study of governance and institutions and the conference’s theme. We aim to assemble a WOW7 conference program that will incorporate diverse theoretical, methodological, and empirical inquiries from around the world. WOW7 will be held at Indiana University - Bloomington from June 19-21, 2024.
PANEL SUBMISSIONS: You are invited to propose one or more 90-minute panels of 3 to 5 presentations (please, no fewer than three and no more than five per panel). Your panel proposal should include an abstract of up to 250 words describing the panel’s focus and rationale, plus 200-word abstracts of each individual presentation. The online submission form will also require the panel’s title and list of the panelists’ names.
PAPER SUBMISSIONS: You are invited to submit a paper, which will be considered for inclusion in one of the proposed panels or a new panel organized by the conference committee. Your abstract should be no longer than 200 words (excluding title). The online submission form requires a complete list of authors and affiliations and contact information for the corresponding author.
Proposals should be submitted through our Online Submission Form
Panel & Paper submission deadline: Oct. 15th, 2023 (midnight)
For any questions contact: wow@iu.edu