Prosocial Framework

= rules framework for the evolution of fairness, based on the principles of Ostrom

Description

"PROSOCIAL is a framework for improving the efficacy of groups that is being developed by the Evolution Institute.

It is based on eight core design principles that are needed by most groups whose members must work together to achieve common goals:

Strong group identity and understanding of purpose.
Fair distribution of costs and benefits.
Fair and inclusive decision-making.
Monitoring agreed-upon behaviors.
Graduated sanctions for misbehaviors.
Fast and fair conflict resolution.
Authority to self-govern.
Appropriate relations with other groups.

These principles were initially derived by Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist by training, for groups that were attempting to manage common-pool resources. The fact that groups possessing these design features were capable of managing their own affairs was so new against the background of received economic wisdom that Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009. The design principles were later generalized by David Sloan Wilson, Ostrom, and Michael Cox in two respects. First, they follow from the basic evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in all species and our own evolutionary history as a highly cooperative species. Second, because of their theoretical generality, they apply to a much broader range of human groups than those attempting to manage common-pool resources. That is why they provide a practical framework for improving the efficacy groups, which is the objective of PROSOCIAL." (http://alanhonick.com/prosocial/)

Principles

Core and Auxiliary Design Principles:

"Virtually all positive change efforts can be seen as the wise management of evolutionary processes so that they become aligned with our current environments and normative goals. ‍ The first step of the Prosocial Path helps groups and their members take charge of their evolution, expanding their repertoire of behaviors (variation) for overcoming obstacles and working toward their valued goals (selection).

Groups can be much more effective than individuals at accomplishing positive change--but only if they are structured in the right way. Inspired by the Nobel-prize winning work of the political scientist Elinor Ostrom, the second step of the Prosocial Path teaches eight core design principles that all groups need to function well, plus auxiliary design principles that are needed by some groups but not others to reach their particular objectives. ‍ Not only can these principles forge your group into a highly cooperative unit, but they can also be used to create cooperative relationships with other groups. Once a meta-group becomes a highly cooperative unit, it can cooperate with other meta-groups, all the way up to a global scale. It really is possible to think globally, act locally, and also act globally in this multi-level fashion!

The third step of the Prosocial Path is to “hit the ground running” with short-term goals that the group formulates on the basis of the first two steps. However, the Prosocial Path does not end with the first three steps. Our intention is to work with groups over the long term to track their success and develop their relationships with other groups. In this fashion, Prosocial groups score early successes and keep on going to achieve their long-term goals."
(https://www.prosocial.world/)

Discussion

Planetary Governance as a Design Problem

Clement Vidal:

"If the planetary cooperation barrier is a systemic problem, then its resolution requires systemic design. Policy design problems are typically wicked problems that are hard to describe, hard to agree upon, hard to evaluate, and allow more than one optimal solution (Rittel and Webber 1973). The question of how to design global institutions is a wicked problem, and the flexible frameworks of cybernetics and evolution are naturally compatible with the application of design thinking. Solving the planetary cooperation barrier requires first and foremost designing selection environments in which cooperation is the preferred strategy for every actor, including and most importantly for the most powerful and self-interested.

This design must accomplish three things simultaneously.

First, it must suppress free-riding: theft, cheating, war, environmental damage, and information manipulation must become structurally costly rather than rewarded.

Second, it must reward cooperation: synergies between the planetary spheres must be actively incentivized: climate protection in the geosphere, environmental stewardship in the biosphere, stable peace and information integrity in the noosphere.

Third, it must achieve a great alignment between the spheres: a holospheric management in which the geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere are governed as an integrated system, with established rights and responsibilities across all three domains (Vidal 2023; Ronfeldt 2025)."

(https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Planetary_Cooperation_Barrier)

* Planetary Constitution and Identity

Clement Vidal:

"In the Prosocial framework’s core design principles, the first and most fundamental principle is identity: a clear group identity and shared sense of purpose. In Beer’s Viable System Model, this is System 5: the normative authority that defines who the system is, what it values, and how it balances internal and external demands. In living system theory, it is the recognition that the planet is one, and needs to be analyzed and treated as a whole.

The construction of a planetary constitution represents the institutional expression of this identity. The intellectual history of world constitutionalism is longer and richer than is commonly appreciated. The history of world governance (Mazower 2012) spans ideas from Kant’s perpetual peace project, through Bentham’s coinage of the term “international law,” to the post-World War II efforts by some of the finest minds of the century to draft a world constitution (Hutchins et al. 1948). It is sobering that the millions of deaths in two world wars were insufficient to establish a global constitution. Yet one can hope that these efforts set the intellectual foundations for subsequent endeavors, such as the Earth Charter Initiative (Earth Charter Commission 2000).

A planetary constitution must go beyond the Enlightenment tradition of rational, analytical constitutionalism. It must be an evolutionary and metasystemic constitution: one designed to create a complex adaptive system capable of planetary-scale learning and control (Stewart 2018; 2024). Our time is ripe for the creation of a planetary constitution. Summing up what we have reviewed so far, the foundational principles would include: maintaining maximal sovereignty of nation-states, bending sovereignty only for planetary-scale issues (see Blake and Gilman 2024); establishing sovereignty as responsibility rather than mere privilege; implementing mutual coercion mutually agreed upon (Hardin 1968), and a holistic inclusion of the geosphere, biosphere, and noospheres (the holosphere).

The institutional expression of this constitution could take the form of an extended Earth System Council (Global Governance Forum 2025), but I would suggest also a holospheric governance body integrating geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere management. This would represent a third domain of policy, alongside the traditional domestic and foreign policy domains: a global policy focused on the planetary commons."