Research On Ostrom’s Public Governance Theory

The governance of contemporary public resources and affairs has become an issue of concern to the world.Examples of resource waste are not uncommon.However,the academic community has never had a perfect solution to the dilemma of public resources,such as the "tragedy of the commons" and the "dilemma of collective action".There is an endless debate between the two solutions of centralized government and market private ownership.On the basis of previous studies,Ostrom spent nearly fifty years of practical investigations to sum up his own governance theory of public affairs: public governance theory.Ostrom found that in some successful public resource use cases,citizens can consciously design a rule system to deal with various social dilemmas and collective action problems,and this rule system is an important form of social capital.While social capital promotes the smooth implementation of the rule system,it further expands the power of citizens and promotes multi-party participation in the management of public resources to realize the possibility of citizens’ autonomous governance.Therefore,the thesis divides Eleanor Ostrom’s public governance theory into: social capital theory,autonomous governance theory and polycentric governance theory according to the logical relationship.The thesis mainly elaborates the four major aspects of its theory: the source of the theory,the main content of the theory,and the influence and reference of the theory.The first part mainly introduces the background of the formation of the theory of public governance and the origin of the theory.First,it explains the background of promoting the formation of the theory of public governance and the theoretical and practical sources of the theory.The second part mainly introduces the system analysis method and main content of the theory,and respectively explains the social capital theory,autonomous governance theory and polycentric governance theory.The third part evaluates the theory from the influence and limitations.The fourth part starts from reality,according to China’s national conditions,and seeks reference in the theory of public governance that conforms to national conditions and is beneficial to social governance.