Vincent Ostrom Elinor Ostrom

“It came out of the blue, totally unexpected,” said Elinor Ostrom.

They will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation’s Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders on Friday, Nov. 7.

The award, which carries a cash prize of $50,000, honors the Ostroms’ individual scholarly accomplishments as well as their joint work in sustaining the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis, an IU center the Ostroms established in 1973.

Called “one of the most successful academic research centers in America” by the Atlas Foundation, the workshop will mark its 30th anniversary this year.

Elinor Ostrom is a past president of the American Political Science Association and the first woman to receive the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science from Uppsala University (also worth $50,000). She is widely recognized for her study of how common-pool resources, such as water, are used. Ostrom’s work also includes groundbreaking analyses of police departments and other organizations.

Along with James M. Buchanan, Vincent Ostrom is one of the early developers of the public choice theory of policy-making and served as president of the Public Choice Society from 1967 to 1969. He has made significant contributions to the study of American Federalism and civil society. This summer, he was awarded the Robert O. Anderson Sustainable Arctic Award for helping to create a natural resources section in the Alaska state constitution.

The Ostroms, who came to IU in the mid-1960s, describe their work as the investigation of patterns that have to do with the ordering of society. Known for their development of the concept of polycentrism (multiple centers of authority and decision-making), they focus on understanding the interactions of diverse private and public enterprises, from official government to voluntary nonprofit organizations to small informal groups.

“We study institutions,” Elinor Ostrom said, “but we always include the people. You can never talk about structure without talking about people.” Pointing to the California state budget crisis and the recent recall as an example, she said, “those problems didn’t come about without humans making choices.”

In their three decades of involvement with the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis, the Ostroms have built a multidisciplinary center that regularly hosts scholars from Africa, China, Eastern Europe, Mexico, Israel and elsewhere. In June, the center will hold an international conference of more than 100 scholars to commemorate its 30th year.

Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of political science and director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, and Vincent Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor emeritus of political science, will accept their awards at a ceremony and reception at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, Va.

GMU faculty members and Nobel Laureates Gordon Tullock and Vernon Smith are scheduled to present the awards. In connection with the award, the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders will hold an academic seminar on the Ostroms’ work.

The Ostroms will contribute their $50,000 prize to the Tocqueville Endowment for the Study of Human Institutions, a fund they established through the IU Foundation to support the ongoing work of the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis.