Ronald J. Oakerson (born 1944) is a professor emeritus of political science and intercultural studies at Houghton College.[1] He has served previously as the college's Vice President and Dean, as well as the chairman of the Department of History and Political Science. He is a founding member of the National Rural Studies Council and served on the American Political Science Association's Task Force on Civic Education for the Next Century.[2] Elinor Ostrom described Oakerson as an important contributor to the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework.[3] On the version of the framework Oakerson presented at the Proceedings of the Conference on Common Property Resource Management at the National Research Council in April 1985,[4] Ostrom wrote that it "...has influenced an untold number of studies of common-property regimes in many diverse sectors in all regions of the world."
Oakerson states, "The purpose of education is to build a bridge between generations, so as to preserve our accomplishments."
From 1985-88 he was a senior analyst with the US Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and directed the Commission's program on metropolitan government. He has previously taught at Marshall University and from 1988-92 was a scholar with the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington.
Oakerson is a former member of the Panel on Common Property Resources Management of the National Research Council and a coeditor of Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy (1992).[5] From 1992-94 he served as the research director for the Program of Research on Market Transitions of the US Agency for International Development (Cameroon).