Just after the global financial crisis of 2008 the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Elinor Ostrom for her work on Common Pool Resources (CPR). While I'm not sure if there was a correlation between the two events, it does seem that giving the award to someone who's body of work shows that people can successfully handle pooled resources without government regulation or privatization was at least a happy coincidence.

In this book Ostrom details a variety of different situations around the world where people have come up with solutions for dealing with CPR. Some situations have been highly successful, others not as much, but all are described in great detail along with analysis on why the situation has been or not been able to work. The overall thesis is to show that the most popular models used in dealing with common resources, mainly the tragedy of the commons, are very pessimistic and are only good for people who have no communication or are very short sighted. The last chapter in particular details explicitly problems with trying to use tractable models in economics and sets out her own parameters for future policy makers to use.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who deals in public policy and thinks that there is one solution that will work in all times and all places.