Commons governance

Commons governance is the management of a shared resource, such as a pasture, a forest or a water supply, by the people who use it, under rules they set and enforce themselves. The Logos activist course Building a Parallel Society uses it as evidence that ordinary people can run lasting institutions with no one above them. It is a building block of the parallel society that Logos promotes.

The basics

The course calls commons governance the "prior claim" on which the idea of a parallel society rests: that ordinary people can run institutions that last. It cites two cases:

• Alpine villages that have run their common pastures under their own rules for centuries, one of them under a written charter since the 1200s.
• Spanish farming communities that have shared irrigation water among thousands of families for over five hundred years.

The course says these cases have been studied closely, including failures. It names "fisheries where no rule could stick" and "water systems that tried to fix everything at once". From this record it draws four build rules:

1. Membership. A group knows who is in and who is not. The course says rules without a membership boundary do not last.
2. Scale. A group starts small and wins something real before it grows.
3. Disputes. A group settles disputes in its own arena, with people it recognises.
4. Nesting. Small groups nest into larger ones, never in one leap.

The course names no researcher.

Ostrom's design principles

Cases matching both descriptions appear in the work of the political scientist Elinor Ostrom. In her 1990 book Governing the Commons she proposed eight principles that contribute to the success of self-governed commons. She shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. A chapter of the book is titled "Analyzing Institutional Failures and Fragilities".

The P2P Foundation summarises the eight design principles as:

1. Clearly defined boundaries, which define who has access to the resource.
2. Rules for use and provision that are tailored to local conditions.
3. Collective-choice arrangements that let most users take part in decisions.
4. Effective monitoring by people accountable to the users.
5. Graduated sanctions for those who break the rules.
6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms that are cheap and quick to reach.
7. Recognition of the community's right to organise by higher authorities.
8. Nested enterprises, with small local units inside larger layers.

Criticism

Samuel Garrido examined the Spanish cases in the journal Historia Agraria in 2011. He wrote that Ostrom's information on them "came from works that defended their democratic character", views with which "most Spanish experts disagree". He tested whether her eight principles were present in the huertas and found that "sometimes they were not".

How it applies to Logos

The course applies the build rules to Circles. It says a Circle starts with one need, one activation day and one community, and grows into a working institution. In its words: "That is the build rules at work: know who is in, start small, win something real, then grow."

The Logos Circles handbook carries related rules. The Circles Charter says "Participants join an action, not a discussion." After the first issue, "the Circle decides as a group what issue to tackle next." The handbook's Issue Buckets page asks a steward to begin with one visible win and then "gradually connect with other Circles to tackle bigger issues". The roadmap adopts a "Snowflake model for Circles: small autonomous groups with distributed leadership." The Kano Circle drew a similar lesson from its own work. It cut a school hygiene plan from six schools to four and concluded that "focusing on fewer sites is better than spreading the Circle too thin". See Playbook/Kano: Building lasting hygiene habits in schools and orphanages.

Kampala: a ledger for savings cooperatives

In Uganda, savings and credit cooperatives, known as SACCOs, hold the money of ordinary members. The Kampala Circle is building a ledger for them on the Logos Blockchain. Its September 2026 report named "Trust gaps between SACCO members and leadership" and "Manual and paper-based financial records" as problems. Its October 2026 report cited a reported case of a SACCO holding the savings of 34 deceased members over inheritance disputes.

The Circle's design keeps the money off the chain. In its words, "The program is a record, not a custodian." Members' money stays in mobile money and bank accounts. The chain records deposits, approvals and expenses with evidence. A supervisory committee account sits alongside the committee that approves, and the report states: "Oversight is split from approval." Approval rules can be set for each SACCO. The report explains that "Institutional, community and trader SACCOs govern themselves differently, so one chain-wide rule would be wrong." Each member's balance stays private, while each SACCO's totals stay public and verifiable.

At the time of the October report the project had no pilot SACCO. Finding one was listed as an open question. See Issue 2/Every Shilling Accounted For.

A planned savings fund

A section of the Circles Charter headed "Future Direction (Charter V2)" sets out plans that are not yet in force. It says "Every Circle will operate a local savings and mutual aid fund." It adds officer roles, including a treasurer and a warden. Withdrawals from the fund require the treasurer's "dual authorisation with the Steward". A warden "manages disputes where appropriate and escalates serious issues when necessary."

Examples

• Törbel, Switzerland. Törbel is a village in the Upper Valais that Ostrom visited in the 1980s. Its first written entries on the division of land date back to 1224. On 1 February 1483 its members set up an association whose rules for governing the commons are still in effect, according to a study of Ostrom's work by the legal scholar Grzegorz Blicharz.
• Huertas of eastern Spain. Ostrom's sample included the irrigation communities in the huertas of Valencia, Murcia, Orihuela and Alicante. Blicharz dates the written laws of the huertas to 29 May 1435. UNESCO listed the Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia and the Council of Wise Men of the Plain of Murcia as intangible cultural heritage in 2009. The Water Tribunal has eight elected administrators. They represent 11,691 members from nine communities. UNESCO says its members are elected democratically and settle disputes orally.

See also

• Parallel society
• Circles
• Winnable issue
• Cherán
• Start a Circle/Circles Charter
• Circles/Kampala

Takes on this idea

None yet. See Takes.

Sources

• Building a Parallel Society, Logos activist course, 2026
• The Swiss commune that inspired a Nobel prize-winning theory on communal ownership, Le News, 13 December 2016
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons, Cambridge University Press
• Elinor Ostrom's Eight Commons Governance Design Principles, P2P Foundation Wiki, 2020
• Learning how to share: principles for governing the commons, Arizona State University, 7 October 2016
• Samuel Garrido, Las instituciones de riego en la España del este. Una reflexión a la luz de la obra de Elinor Ostrom, Historia Agraria 53, April 2011
• Grzegorz J. Blicharz, Governing the Commons in the Era of Decodification and Self-Responsible Societies, Digital Library of the Commons, Indiana University
• Circles Charter, Logos Circles handbook, read 2026-11-04
• Circles Civil Society Issue Buckets (Pilot), Logos Circles handbook, read 2026-11-04
• Roadmap for Logos Circles, Logos Circles handbook, read 2026-11-04
• Building lasting hygiene habits in schools and orphanages, Parallel Society Playbook, read 2026-11-04
• Logos Circle Kampala Report, September 2026, Logos Forum, 28 September 2026
• Logos Circle Kampala Report, October 2026, Logos Forum, 26 October 2026
• Local Area Network, Issue 2, Logos, October 2026 ("Every Shilling Accounted For", p. 8)
• Irrigators' tribunals of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, UNESCO, 2009

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