Reduncancy and Diversity in Governing and Managing Common-Pool Resources

"In many fields, policymakers seem to have an increasing preference for simple, large, non- redundant systems of analysis and governance. To address this question, we examine several arenas in which scholars have studied the costs and benefits of different levels of redundancy, including: ecological resiliency, computer design, aircraft design, genetics and genetic algorithms, condercet jury theory, and regulatory regimes. Both empirical data and models suggest that a simple prescription is, at best, premature--bigger and less redundant may not always be 'better.' We find that several kinds of costs and benefits must be considered, and they do not co- vary uniformly with size and redundancy. We suggest that a better approach is to ask: For any system, what is the optimal level of redundancy?"