The Polycentric Production of Global Public Goods [pdf]
This paper argues that global public goods—such as climate stability, disease control, and financial stability—can be effectively produced through polycentric governance, where multiple independent actors and institutions coordinate at different scales, rather than relying solely on a single central authority.
Background
- Paul Goodman, a governance scholar known for his work on polycentricity, digital constitutionality, and the philosophy of public goods, draws on research by Elinor Ostrom (Nobel laureate) who showed groups can self-govern shared resources without top-down authority.
- The paper argues that classic "global public goods" — things like internet protocols, climate stability, pandemic surveillance — are best produced not by states or markets alone, but by overlapping, self-organized communities and technical bodies (e.g., ICANN for domain names, IETF for web standards).
- "Polycentric" here means many centers of decision-making (coders, scientists, NGOs, firms) interacting voluntarily, competing and cooperating across borders, often more adaptive than a single global government or treaty.
- The piece responds to a long debate in economics and political theory: can decentralized, non-state systems handle large-scale collective-action problems like the tragedy of the commons? Goodman argues yes, under certain design principles Ostrom identified.