Abstract
The paper explores the Public Administration roots and facets of the Bloomington School of Public Choice and Institutional Theory and in doing that, it revisits the problem of the applied dimension of Public Choice. The paper investigates and documents the nature, significance and reception of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom’s work, approaching it as a pioneering attempt to promote a double agenda: on the one hand, to advance Public Choice theory as a paradigm shift in Public Administration, and on the other, to advance Public Administration as the preeminent applied domain of Public Choice theory.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brams, S. (2006). The normative turn in public choice. Public Choice, 127, 245–250.
Brown, B., & Stillman, R. J., I. I. (1986). A search for public administration. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Buchanan, J. M. (2000). Economics: Between predictive science and moral philosophy. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Caldwell, B. (2008). Gordon Tullock’s ‘The Organization of Inquiry’: A critical appraisal. Public Choice, Vol. 135, No. 1/2. In A symposium on Tullock’s contributions to spontaneous order studies, April, 2008 (pp. 23–34).
Frederickson, G., Smith, K., Larimer, C., & Licari, M. (2012). The Public Administration theory primer (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gigerenzer, G. (2008). Rationality for mortals: How people cope with uncertainty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lovrich, N., & Neiman, M. (1984). Public choice theory in public administration: An annotated bibliography; foreword by Robert Golembiewski (Vol. 167). New York: Garland Reference Library of Social Science, Garland.
Lynn, L. (2006). Public Management: Old and new. New York: Routledge.
Lynn, N. B., & Wildawsky, A. (Eds.). (1990). Public Administration—The state of the discipline. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
McGinnis, M., & Ostrom, E. (2012). Reflections on Vincent Ostrom, public administration, and polycentricity. Public Administration Review, 72(1), 15–25.
Ostrom, V. (1964). Editorial comment: Developments in the “no-name” fields of public administration. Public Administration Review, 24(1), 62–63.
Ostrom, V. (1997). The meaning of democracy and the vulnerability of democracies: A response to Tocqueville’s challenge. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Ostrom, E. (1998). The comparative study of public economies. In Presented upon acceptance of the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy. Memphis, TN: P.K. Seidman Foundation.
Ostrom, V. (1999). Public goods and public choices. In M. McGinnis (Ed.), Polycentricity and local public economies: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (pp. 75–103). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Ostrom, V. (2008 [1973]). The intellectual crisis in American Public Administration (3rd Ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. [1st ed. 1973; rev. ed. 1974; 2nd ed. 1989].
Ostrom, V. (2008). The political theory of a compound republic (rev, in.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction; Lanham, MD: Found Lexington Books.
Ostrom, V., Bish, R., & Ostrom, E. (1988). Local government in the United States. San Francisco: ICS Press.
Ostrom, E., & Ostrom, V. (2004). The quest for meaning in Public Choice. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 63(1), 105–147.
Ostrom, V., Tiebout, C., & Warren, R. (1961). The organization of government in metropolitan areas: A theoretical inquiry. American Political Science Review, 55, 831–842.
Public Administration Section of APSA. (2005). Gaus Awards. Public Administration Section Newsletter, 4(1), 1–2.
Smith, V. (2009). Rationality in economics, constructivist and ecological forms. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Stillman, R. J., I. I. (1999). Preface to Public Administration: A search for themes and direction. Burke, VA: Chatelaine Press.
Toonen, T. (1998). Networks, management and institutions: Public administration as “normal science”. Public Administration, 76(2), 229–252.
Toonen, T. (2010). Resilience in Public Administration: The work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom from a Public Administration perspective. Public Administration Review, 70(2), 193–202.
Tullock, G. (1966). The organization of inquiry. Durham: Duke University Press. Also in C. K. Rowley (Ed., 2005) The selected works of Gordon Tullock (Vol. 3). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Waldo, D. (1981). The enterprise of Public Administration: A summary view. Navato, CA: Chandler and Sharp.
Acknowledgments
This paper was presented in the Plenary Session dedicated to The Bloomington School of Political Economy at The 50th Anniversary Conference of the Public Choice Society, in New Orleans, 7–19 March 2013. The author would like to thank the members of the panel, Michael Munger, Roberta Herzberg, James Walker and Eli Dourado. Special thanks to Ed Lopez, William F. Shughart II, Steven Brams and Theo Toonen for their generous comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Aligica, P.D. Public Administration, Public Choice and the Ostroms: the achievements, the failure, the promise. Public Choice 163, 111–127 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0225-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0225-8