This paper examines an important, but hitherto relatively neglected, aspect of the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, namely her ontological commitments (that is, her views about the nature of social reality and their implications). While they are rarely described as such, Ostrom's writings contain discussions of many important ontological issues (including the openness of the social world, the nature of human agency, the configural nature of social rules; the relationship between social structure and human agency; and the complexity of the social world, viewed as a nested hierarchy of emergent systems). This article is the first to draw together systematically Ostrom's reflections about ontological issues and to identify what Ostrom saw as their implications for the appropriate methods for analysing and explaining the possibility of self-governance. In doing so, the paper also contributes to the growing literature on ontology and the history of economic thought.

本文探讨了诺贝尔奖获得者埃莉诺·奥斯特罗姆 (Elinor Ostrom) 工作的一个重要但迄今为止相对被忽视的方面，即她的本体论承诺（即她对社会现实性质及其影响的看法）。虽然很少被这样描述，但奥斯特罗姆的著作包含对许多重要本体论问题的讨论（包括社会世界的开放性、人类能动性的本质、社会规则的配置性质；社会结构与人类能动性之间的关系；以及社会世界的复杂性，被视为新兴系统的嵌套层次结构）。这篇文章是第一次系统地绘制奥斯特罗姆' 对本体论问题的反思，并确定奥斯特罗姆认为它们对分析和解释自治可能性的适当方法的影响。在这样做的过程中，本文还为不断增长的本体论和经济思想史文献做出了贡献。