Most American institutions of higher learning practice some form of shared governance, in which individual faculty and the faculty body retain substantive decision rights and meaningful spheres of authority. But today’s higher education landscape presents novel challenges that are undermining the integrity of university governance. Building upon the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and the Bloomington School of political economy, this paper interprets university governance through the lens of the polycentric order, identifies the conditions in which faculty are more likely to uphold the principles of good governance, and the conditions under which they are more likely to become “fair-weather friends” and violate those norms, rendering governance norms increasingly thin and decreasingly able to withstand internal and external pressures. I then discuss institutional reforms that may assist in the restoration of norms that foster resilience.

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