Ostrom(1990) challenged the traditional belief that commons management inevitably requires state ownership
or privatization and instead established the notion of user self-governance. This notion, a third policy option for
managing the commons, entails little or no state involvement. Under this notion, Ostrom developed eight design
principles to which self-governing institutional arrangements adhere, while the role of the state isminimal. This
article seeks to establish whether design principles characterize such institutional arrangements when the role of
the state is accommodated explicitly within the principles. Drawing on a case study of present-day management
of Japan's community-based coastal fisheries commons, our study shows that the design principles can better
characterize self-governing institutional arrangements when the state adopts a pro-user self-governance role
that provides strategic support for users, but neither takes ownership of the commons nor participates in engineering
the institutional arrangements.