Ostrom (1990) developed the notion of user self-governing institutions and proposed eight design principles to characterize such institutions at a time when it was widely believed that users of shared natural resources were unable to self-organize if state authorities did not take ownership of the commons or privatize it. These eight design principles focus on the importance of user self-governance, while limiting the state's role. It is now well established that users are able to communicate among themselves, and thereby, develop self-governing institutional arrangements to resolve overuse of the commons, with little or no reliance on the state. Herein, our study examined how these design principles can characterize user self-governing institutions when the role of the state is accommodated explicitly within the design principles.