Covenants With and Without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible

Summary

Laboratory experiments on common-pool resource dilemmas. Hobbes held that “covenants, without the sword, are but words.” The paper tests that claim. Letting participants communicate, even without external enforcement, substantially increases cooperation. Communication combined with sanctioning that participants choose themselves produces near-optimal outcomes.

Why it’s useful here

• Evidence that groups can govern shared resources without an outside enforcer, which a volunteer-run server or network has to do.
• Practical lesson: build in channels to talk (meetings, chat, forums) before building enforcement tools.
• Sanctioning alone is costly; it works best when the group designs it.

Key ideas

• “Cheap talk” (non-binding communication) improves cooperation
• Self-chosen sanctions outperform imposed ones
• Hobbes’s Leviathan as the foil

Related

• ostrom-2010-beyond-markets-and-states.md
• ostrom-1990-governing-the-commons.md