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Public Administration, Public Choice and the Ostroms: the achievements, the failure, the promise

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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.

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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.

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Correspondence to Paul Dragos Aligica.

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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

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0225-8

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