Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School: Building a New Approach to Policy and the Social Sciences

206 Pages·2021·2.905 MB·English

by  Jayme Lemke, Vlad Tarko

ELINOR OSTROM AND THE
BLOOMINGTON SCHOOL
Building a New Approach to
Policy and the Social Sciences
EDITED BY
JAYME LEMKE AND VLAD TARKO
We dedicate this book to every student of human civilization who embraces the
opportunity to learn from and engage with diferent disciplines, methods, and
perspectives.
© Editorial matter, introduction and selection 2021 Jayme Lemke and Vlad Tarko.
Individual chapters: the contributors.
Tis book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2021 by Agenda Publishing
Agenda Publishing Limited
Te Core
Bath Lane
Newcastle Helix
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE4 5TF
www.agendapub.com
ISBN 978-1-78821-123-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-78821-124-6 (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors ix
1. Introduction: the Bloomington school in context
Jayme Lemke and Vlad Tarko 1
2. Public choice theory: reuniting Virginia and Bloomington
Emil Duhnea and Adam Martin 7
3. New institutional economics: building from shared foundations
Michael D. McGinnis 25
4. Elinor Ostrom as behavioral economist
Vlad Tarko 47
5. New economic sociology and the Ostroms: a combined approach
Alice Calder and Virgil Henry Storr 71
6. Foundations of social order: the Ostroms and John Searle
Adrian Miroiu and Adelin Dumitru 87
7. Environmental policy from a self-governance perspective
Jayme Lemke and Jordan K. Lofthouse 105
8. Learning from the socialist calculation debate: is efciency in public
economics possible?
Peter J. Boettke 123
9. Public administration from “intellectual crisis” to contemporary
“governance theory”
Paul Dragos Aligica 137
10. Rethinking federalism: social order through evolution or design?
Rosolino A. Candela 153
References 171
Index 193
v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Te greatest debt this book owes is to the contributors, who lent their time,
patience, and expertise to this deceptively complicated undertaking. Tank you
all. We are also deeply grateful to Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom, without
whom the Bloomington school’s exciting and interdisciplinary approach to the
study of human civilization could never have been possible. Teir scholarship
and the example they have set with their personal and professional lives is a
source of great inspiration.
In their keenly felt absence, we have relied heavily on the knowledge of many
of their former students, both those formally enrolled at Indiana University
Bloomington and those who engaged with the Workshop in Political Teory
and Policy Analysis in other ways. Although there are too many such collabo-
rators to name, we would be remiss if we did not call special attention to Paul
Dragos Aligica, Peter J. Boettke, Roberta Q. Herzberg, and Michael D. McGinnis.
Teir contributions to the intellectual community at both IU Bloomington and
George Mason University built an important bridge that has sustained this pro-
ject and the broader intellectual inquiry it represents.
One of the many lessons that emerges from the work of Elinor Ostrom and
her Bloomington school colleagues is the important role that community plays.
Te impact of community takes both direct and indirect forms, and we have no
hope of being able to list the many teachers, peers, students, and scholars who
have provided encouragement, intellectual challenge, and professional support.
Our most heartfelt thanks to all of them. Tank you also to the Mercatus Center
at George Mason University for their support over the years, and to Logan
Hansen for valuable contributions during the copy-editing process.
To paraphrase Elinor Ostrom’s dedication to Vincent from Governing the
Commons, thank you all for the afection and contestation.
Jayme Lemke
Vlad Tarko
vii

CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Dragos Aligica is a Senior Research Fellow at the F. A. Hayek Program for
Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, and KPMG Professor of Governance at the University
of Bucharest. Among his most recent publications are Public Governance and
the Classical Liberal Perspective: Te Political Economy Foundations (with Peter
Boettke and Vlad Tarko) (2019) and Public Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and
Self-Governance (2018).
Peter J. Boettke is a University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George
Mason University, and Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study
in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University. He is the author of Challenging the Institutional Analysis of Develop-
ment (with Paul Aligica) (2009), and Public Governance and the Classical Liberal
Perspective (with Paul Aligica and Vlad Tarko) (2019), which both deal with the
contributions of the Ostroms and the Bloomington school.
Rosolino A. Candela is an Associate Director of Academic and Student Pro-
grams and a Senior Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University. Prior to George Mason University, he taught in the Department of
Economics at Brown University, where he was also a postdoctoral research asso-
ciate in the Political Teory Project. He was also a visiting professor of econom-
ics at Universidad Francisco Marroquin, and a visiting fellow in the Department
of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute.
Alice Calder is a writer and economist who seeks to understand the impact
of cultural and social infuences on our economic actions. Originally from the
UK, she received her MA in applied economics from George Mason University
and is an alumna of the Mercatus Center MA fellowship. Prior to this she
received her BA Hons in philosophy and political economy from the University
of Exeter. Her interests lie in the intersection of economics and culture, eco-
nomic sociology, and the future of work. She also writes on international trade,
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
helping to explain the importance and relevance of this issue to both our eco-
nomic and cultural lives.
Adelin Dumitru is Assistant Professor at the Polytechnic University of
Bucharest. He also teaches classes in political philosophy, rational choice the-
ory, and the history of political and social thought at the National University
of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. His research inter-
ests are distributive justice, ethics of immigration, relational egalitarianism and
the interplay between empirical and normative theorization in general. He has
published in journals such as Philosophia, Studies in Philosophy and Education,
Philosophical Forum, Educational Philosophy and Teory, and South African
Journal of Philosophy. He is one of the founding members of the Bucharest
Center for Political Teory.
Emil Duhnea is a lawyer with experience in real estate, banking and fnance,
intellectual property, technology and competition. His research interests include
law and economics, the evolution of legal institutions, Austrian economics and
public choice, with a focus on monopoly, competition and the original intent
and early development of antitrust law. He is passionate about US history and
occasionally publishes fction.
Jayme Lemke has a PhD in economics from George Mason University and is a
Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and
a Senior Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy,
Politics, and Economics. Her specialization is in public choice economics, con-
stitutional political economy, and the political economy of women’s rights.
Jordan K. Lofthouse is a Senior Fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for
Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center
at George Mason University. He is also an Associate Director of Academic and
Student Programs with the Mercatus Center. He graduated from George Mason
University with a PhD in economics, where he also received the William P.
Snavely Award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies in Economics.
His research applies the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political
economy to environmental issues and economic development.
Adam Martin is Political Economy Research Fellow at the Free Market Institute
and an Associate Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the College
of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech University. His
research interests focus on the intersection of philosophy, politics and econom-
ics and include Austrian economics, economic methodology, economic devel-
opment and public choice.
x