Participation Without Worship

25 July 2026 · 3 minutes

Political conversation often demands a choice between believing in an institution and rejecting it entirely. But a system can be used, criticised and changed without turning either participation or cynicism into a religion.

Elinor Ostrom studied forests, pastures, irrigation systems and other common resources that communities managed without a simple choice between full privatisation and orders from a central authority. The successful systems differed, but clear boundaries, user participation in the rules, monitoring, graduated sanctions and an accessible way of settling disputes kept recurring in them.

Her work matters precisely because it offers no universal recipe. An institution doesn’t become good from its name alone — “market,” “state” or “community.” It works if the rules fit the resource, if the participants can see the consequences, and if they can correct the design without destroying the whole system.

Even someone who has settled in a forest uses a road, a map, tools, property rights and sometimes emergency medicine. Independence usually rests on a large invisible infrastructure.

So criticising society doesn’t excuse you from taking part in it.

You can distrust political parties and still vote for the less dangerous one. You can doubt charities and support a vetted one. You can consider the law imperfect and use the courts.

Participation doesn’t require worship.

It helps to hold a double view:

This system performs a necessary function.

This system is capable of defending itself first of all.

Both statements can be true at once.

Institutions should be neither loved nor hated, but checked:

do they solve the stated problem;
at what cost;
for whom;
to whom are they accountable;
can they admit a mistake;
can they be replaced;
what happens without them.

Cynicism looks like a mark of adulthood, because it explains any disappointment in advance. But it is poor help when choosing between imperfect options.

Naivety judges an institution kind by its name. Cynicism judges it useless because an interest was found. The practical view asks what the system actually does and whether it can be made to do it better.

Society doesn’t have to match a fine idea before anything in it is worth repairing.

Otherwise this field guide would have to end with a single piece of advice: find another planet.

Sources and further reading

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525

Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science. Science, 159(3810), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56

Schelling, T. C. (1978). Micromotives and macrobehavior. W. W. Norton.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

For most people the nearest common resource is the stairwell and the yard. A building where a meeting approves the budget once a year, and any resident can look at the records of work done, usually lives a dull life with no leaks. A building where the management company decides everything, and residents learn about the repairs from the bill, discusses not the budget but the personality of the manager. The second building isn’t worse in its people. It is simply built so that there is nothing to look at, and so all that’s left to discuss is personalities.

The difference here isn’t people’s honesty, but whether there is a way to look and to object without wrecking the whole construction. An institution that can’t survive a question about the budget usually never intended to solve the stated problem.

Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press.

Tocqueville, A. de. (1835–1840). De la démocratie en Amérique.

Part VII