Elenor Ostrom defines seven principles for designing organisations which govern a 'Common Pool Resources' (CPR) and one further principle for doing this at scale.

• Clearly defined boundaries
  Individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.
• Congruence between appropriation, provision rules and local conditions
  Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology, and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provision rules requiring labor, material, and/or money.
• Collective-choice arrangements
  Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.
• Monitoring
  Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behavior, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators.
• Graduated sanctions
  Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.
• Conflict-resolution mechanisms
  Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.
• Minimal recognition of rights to organize
  The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.

For commons that are parts of larger systems:

• Nested enterprises
  The design principles for commons need to appear in multiple layers of the larger systems.

• Governing the Commons | Ostrom, Elinor (1990)