What Remains Open

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.