Consortium for State-Reinforced Self-Governance Research Group

Framework

The State-Reinforced Self-Governance (SRSG) Framework was developed to enable scholars and practitioners to conceptualize, analyze, and diagnose governance systems in terms of enabling conditions and underlying design principles that facilitate democratic, self-governing solutions to complex societal dilemmas. SRSG projects and working groups continue to improve the framework and its applications.   

Computational Social Science

Analysis of social-ecological systems and dilemmas requires working with many factors and complex datasets. Projects and working groups in computational social science are developing novel ways to analyze complex systems and dilemmas, using SRSG, Institutional Grammar, and other conceptual and methodological perspectives. The goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of policy design, and computer-assisted analytics and visualization tools for institutional analysis and design. 

• IG-SRSG Integration
• Civic Education Games 

Complex social-ecological systems and dilemmas are difficult to understand. These projects and working groups use games that simulate real-world dilemmas as educational tools (and scientific instruments) to teach basic knowledge of human governance and study how people learn to solve social dilemmas.

Constitutional Decision-Making and Design 

Societies and their systems of government are made using constitutions—formal and informal social contracts (agreements) that combine to make rules, norms, and larger governance systems. These projects and working groups study the cognitive, social, political, and economic processes involved in constitutional choice and design. This research includes Faustian bargaining—negotiation and exchange (tradeoffs) of individual and collective powers, duties, and resources.

Case Studies 

The SRSG Framework has been, and continues to be, applied to a variety of case study systems and problems throughout the world. These projects and working groups focus on particular types of cases, regions, and/or social-ecological systems and dilemmas helping to inform theory and practice.

• DeCaro, Schlager, and Frimpong Boamah. (2025). The State-reinforced self-governance framework: conceptualizing and diagnosing legal and other institutional foundations of adaptive and transformative environmental governance. Ecology and Society 30(2):1. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss2/art1
• DeCaro, Frimpong Boamah, Rudolph, and Adusei. (2025). Maladaptive state reinforcement of greenspace in racially marginalized neighborhoods: lessons from Louisville, Kentucky’s failed cooperative extension partnership. Ecology and Society 30(2):3. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss2/art3
• Frimpong Boamah, Yeboah, Adamu, Yin, Yeleliere, Appai, and Twum. 2025. State-mandated decentralized irrigation reforms: (re)thinking Africa’s irrigation commons using the state-reinforced self-governance framework. Ecology and Society 30(2):7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15956-300207

Constitutional Decision-Making

Organizer: Daniel DeCaro (University of Louisville)

Description: Working group to study constitutional decision-making in systems of governance. We seek to understand the ways in which boundedly rational decision-makers conceptualize, negotiate, and implement “social contracts” (rules, norms, agreements) to govern themselves and the fundamental dilemmas they face as members of complex social-ecological systems and societies. We also seek to develop analytical frameworks and methodological techniques for the empirical study of constitutional choice and institutional evolution.   

AI Governance 

Organizer: Z.R.M. Abdullah Kaiser (University of Louisville)

Description: Working group for the study of artificial intelligence (AI) in human governance systems, including their applications and implications for societal self-governance, effective delivery of public goods/services, and regulation.

SRSG Graduate Students

Organizers: Akua Asante (University of Louisville), Shuping Wang (Syracuse University), Enoch Yeleliere (State University of New York – Buffalo)

Description: Working group for graduate students interested in SRSG to socialize, share and provide feedback on research, identify grant and training opportunities, plan for conferences and other events, prepare for career milestones, and engage in other academic and professional activities.

• “Reimagining the State in Governing the Commons,” (June 2024), Indiana University-Bloomington, USA. Two-day workshop sponsored by the Ostrom Workshop, International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs Center for Policy Design & Governance (Syracuse University), and the Center for Policy and Democracy (University of Colorado – Denver).
• “Advancing an Institutional Grammar of the ‘State’ in State-Reinforced Self-Governance,” (June 2025). Conference panel co-organized for a conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC).
• “Contemplating Opportunities and Challenges in the Integrative Study of State-Reinforced Self-Governance via the Institutional Grammar,” (June 2025). Roundtable, conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC).

Amma Adusei | gammaadusei@southalabam.edu 

University of South Alabama, USA

Department of Integrative Studies

• Leadership and neighborhood governance
• Co-productive design and network
• Sustainable communities

Alejandro Agafonow Cordero | alejandro.agafonow@essca.fr 

ESSCA School of Management, France

• Environmental corporate governance
• Green organizational design
• Ecological economics
• Computational ontologies
• Social-ecological systems and dilemmas (common-pool resources, public goods/bads)
• Adaptive and transformative governance
• State-reinforced self-governance frameworks
• Polycentric and multi-level governance structures
• Institutional design, resilience, and sustainability in environmental governance

Mehrsa Ahmadpour | mehrsa.ahmadpour@louisville.edu

University of Louisville, USA

Department of Urban and Public Affairs

Shahbaz Altaf | Shahbaz.altaf@nice.nust.edu.pk 

National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

Department of Urban and Regional Planning 

• Adaptive and Transformative Governance
• Adaptive and Transformative Governance
• Co-Production of Public Goods/Services
• Sustainability and Social-Ecological Resilience
• Institutional economics
• Environmental governance and policy
• Social-ecological systems
• Collective action
• Water management
• Agroecological transitions
• Qualitative analysis, mixed methods
• France, Europe
• Environmental Policy and Governance
• Climate Risk & Resilience
• Climate Finance

Laurence Amblard | laurence.amblard@inrae.fr

INRAE (Institut National de Recherche sur l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement), France

Akua Asante

University of Louisville, USA

Department of Urban and Public Affairs

Bryan Randolph Bruns | bryanbruns@bryanbruns.com

Independent Scholar: Ostrom Workshop Affiliate, Emeritus Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Member of the International Association for the Study of the Commons

• Water governance: participation in irrigation management, water rights and tenure, groundwater governance
• Cooperation: collective action, interdependence, game theory, social dilemmas
• Institutional design: Institutional analysis and development, polycentric governance, state-reinforced self-governance
• Environmental governance: woodlands restoration, community forestry, invasive species management, habitat regeneration, rewilding, practicing ecosystem stewardship, more-than-human social-ecological systems
• Management and governance of urban green spaces
• Government-nonprofit relationships
• Distributional and performance implications of cross-sector collaboration
• Evidence-based practices

Yuan (Daniel) Cheng | cheng838@umn.edu

University of Minnesota Twin Cities, USA

Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Daniel DeCaro | daniel.decaro@louisville.edu

University of Louisville, USA

• Ostrom Political Economy | Governance and Policy Analysis
• Decision Science | Behavioral Economics
• Democracy and Constitutional Choice
• Civic and Institutional Education
• Social-Ecological Resilience
• Experimental Methods
• Urban Studies

Marci DeCaro | marci.decaro@louisville.edu 

University of Louisville, USA

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

• Cognitive psychology of learning and problem solving
• Civic education
• Democratic decision making
• Experiential learning 

Stephanie Engel | stefanie.engel@uos.de

Osnabrueck University, Germany 

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, and Institute for Environmental Systems Research

• Drivers of cooperation in collective action dilemmas, including the role of inner drivers such as preferences, beliefs, emotions
• Role of collective action skills and inner development in sustainability transformation
• Impact assessment of participatory interventions and of interventions training collective action skills
• Development of educational interventions such as university practice seminars training collective action skills
• Institutional analysis
• Institutional modeling
• Complex social systems
• Computational institutional science
• Agent-based modeling

Christopher Franz | christopher.frantz@ntnu.no

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Department of Computer Science

Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah | efrimpon@buffalo.edu 

The State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

• Ostrom Political Economy
• Constitutional Economics and Polycentric Governance
• Land, Water, Food, and Environmental Governance
• Governing Digital and Ethical Futures
• Social Network Analysis and Modeling
• Urban and Regional Planning
• Southern Theory and Political Economy of Development
• Governance dimensions of migratory species conservation; regime emergence, polycentricity, implementation, social-ecological fit
• Governance dimensions of pandemic prevention
• Human computer interaction
• Commoning
• Agonistic governance practices
• Conflict
• Blockchain regulation
• Cryptocurrency regulation
• Decentralised digital communities such as DAOs
• Sustainability theory
• Environmental governance
• Social dilemmas and collective action
• Ostrom’s design principles and state-reinforced self-governance
• Anthropocene
• Environmental governance applied to bBiodiversity conservation

Ed Gallo-Cajiao | e.gallocajiao@colostate.edu 

Colorado State University, USA

Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Warner College of Natural Resources

Aarjav Chauhan | aarjav.chauhan@mail.utoronto.ca

University of Toronto, Canada

Department of Computer Science and School of the Environment

Akrum El Menshawy | akrum.elmenshawy@ntu.ac.uk

Nottingham Trent University, England

Nottingham Law School

Frank Goetzke | frank.goetzke@louisville.edu

University of Louisville, USA

Department of Urban and Public Affairs

Tanya Heikkila | tanya.heikkila@ucdenver.edu 

University of Colorado Denver, USA

School of Public Affairs

• Environmental governance
• Collective learning
• Policy conflict
• Water and land use governance

Irene Pérez Ibarra | perezibarra@unizar.es

University of Zaragoza, Spain

Department of Agricultural Sciences and the Environment

Agrifood Institute of Aragon, Spain

• Institutional analysis (quantitative institutional diversity and evolution of institutional diversity)
• Social-ecological resilience

ZRM Abdullah Kaiser | Z0kais01@louisville.edu

University of Louisville, USA

Department of Urban and Public Affairs

• AI governance in the public sector
• Nonprofit roles in responsible AI
• Public administration and policy
• Urban governance and sustainability

Anthony Ho-Fai Li | anthonylihf@connect.hku.hk

• Urban commons
• Polycentric governance, developmental state, renewable energy, sustainability, comparative politics, geopolitics, political psychology

Armelle Mazé | armelle.maze@inrae.fr

Université Paris-Saclay, France

INRAE, UMR SADAPT

• Institutional economics
• Collective action
• Self-governance
• Social-ecological systems
• Agroecological transitions
• Climate change
• Food systems,
• Knowledge and informational commons
• Institutional analysis
• Political ecology
• Environmental peacebuilding
• Social mobilization processes
• Institutional multiplicity
• Social-ecological systems governance

Leonardo Medina | l.medina@cgiar.org

Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, Colombia

Land Use and Governance, Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany

Frank Mintah | frank.mintah@unibe.ch

University of Bern, Switzerland

Institute of Geography

• Forest governance (polycentric governance structures, localized institutional arrangements and institutional analysis)
• Environmental justice (equity and institutional arrangements nexus)
• Transformative governance
• System dynamics modeling of social-ecological systems

Mai Nusir | Mainsair1@gmail.com

Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany

• Institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework
• Ostrom’s design principles
• Institutional grammar
• Natural resource governance, specifically common-pool resources
• Community-based resource management

Juan Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo | Juanfelipe.ortizriomalo@uni-osnabrueck.de

Osnabrück University, Germany

Department of Environmental Economics

• Participatory methods and governance for collective action in natural resource environmental management
• Applying and analyzing approaches with potential for nurturing collective action and democracy

Saba Siddiki | ssiddiki@syr.edu 

Syracuse University, USA

Department of Public Administration and International Affairs

• Policy design, implementation, and compliance
• Collaborative policymaking
• Institutional analysis
• Sustainability technology and behavior
• Environmental policy
• Food policy

Juan Sebastian Uribe-Quintero | jsuribeq@syr.edu

Syracuse University, USA

• Policy process
• Policy design
• Environmental policy
• Legislative studies

Shuping Wang | Swang253@syr.edu

Syracuse University, USA 

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

• Adaptive and transformative governance
• Collaborative governance
• Policy process
• Institutional analysis
• Natural resource management
• Energy and environmental policy

Enoch Yeleliere | enochyel@buffalo.edu

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY), USA

Department of Urban and Regional Planning

• The intersection of environmental governance, institutions, and disaster planning for urban sustainable development
• Institutional design and analysis
• Nested socio-ecological dilemmas
• Collaborative institutions and local collective action
• Institutional modeling