Open Questions

The most significant open question in commons governance for Providence concerns the relationship between the global commons and local community autonomy. The principle of subsidiarity, that governance decisions should be made at the most local level at which they can be made well, suggests that many commons governance decisions should be made by local communities rather than by the network as a whole. But the commons is common precisely because it extends beyond any single community. The governance of the commons requires coordination at a level above the local, and the mechanisms for that coordination must be designed in ways that are responsive to local community interests without being captured by any single community's interests.