Innovations in commons research and extensions of the commons framework have moved far beyond the archetypal village grazing pasture.The dynamism of the field may therefore prompt some reflection on what “commons theory” or “the commons framework” means in non-territorially bounded commons.Fortunately, the origins of Elinor Ostrom’s framework are compatible with such innovations and extensions; indeed, reexamining the line of inquiry that gave rise to the Ostrom framework may benefit those working now on the field’s research frontiers.A political scientist, Ostrom was principally concerned throughout her career – and acutely in the period leading to Governing the Commons – with how people manage (and sometimes fail) to organize the governance of anything by creating and modifying institutional arrangements for coordinating their behavior and pursuing shared goals.In this chapter, those original questions that animated Ostrom’s work are reconsidered for the insights they can provide for current innovations in commons research.

Governing complexity tends to produce complex governance. This book has aimed to provide a conceptual and empirical analysis of polycentric governance that can help carry detailed research on the determinants, change and performance of polycentric arrangements into a future research program as well as new fields of application. The chapter reviews the main points of the preceding chapters.

This introductory chapter describes the rise of interest in polycentric governance and locates the book in the current literature on complex governing arrangements. It also explains why the illustrations and examples throughout the book are mainly about natural resources, and water in particular. It previews the chapters and overall organization of the book.

Because many types of governance can be polycentric, an observer faces a challenge in trying to identify and understand polycentric governance in actual settings. This chapter adopts the perspective of thinking about polycentricity as a lens through which to view governance situations. We take an inquiry approach, considering how one might determine whether and in what ways a given governance situation demonstrates the characteristics of polycentric governance. We proceed through a series of questions an observer could pose as part of 'seeing polycentrically', i.e., looking at the aspects and dimensions of polycentric governance introduced in Stephan, Marshall, and McGinnis as a way of building an understanding of a governance situation. We attempt to describe why these queries are important and how posing and answering these questions helps in examining and understanding the situation. We close the chapter by considering the challenges of assessing the operation of polycentric governance arrangements.