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Vincent Ostrom’s revolutionary science of association

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Abstract

Vincent Ostrom challenged epistemic choices at the foundation of modern political science and proposed an alternative conceptualization of democracy based on a theory of federalism he derived from The Federalist and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. This essay examines Vincent Ostrom’s critique of contemporary mainstream political theorizing, relates his original theoretical work to the empirical research Elinor Ostrom, other colleagues, and he conducted, advised, or sponsored at The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Indiana University, and concludes that “Ostrom’s democratic alternative” constitutes an alternative scientific paradigm as defined by Thomas Kuhn. The paper concludes with a comment on the continuing relevance of Ostrom’s critique in the post-9/11 era.

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Notes

  1. He also found common cause with other critics of the mainstream. Vincent Ostrom was a founding delegate to the April 1963 “no name” conference in Charlottesville and served as Society President (1967–1969), a duty also fulfilled by Elinor Ostrom (1982–1984).

  2. To distinguish the authorship of Vincent or Elinor Ostrom, parenthetical citations include the first initial. References in the text employ first and last names, except where the context clearly implies the author’s identity.

  3. The Workshop was renamed The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in honor of its founding co-directors. The author holds a Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University and was a student of Elinor Ostrom’s from 1994 to 1996. The author was not a student of Vincent Ostrom’s but acquired further interest in his work consequent to teaching courses on American political institutions.

  4. Barbara Allen’s commentary and a selection of essays and correspondence relating to Vincent Ostrom's work with the Alaska statehood constitutional convention in Volume 1 of The Quest to Understand Human Affairs: Natural Resources Policy and Essays on Community and Collective Choice (2011) describe how he came to realize the continuing relevance of constitutional choice to contemporary problems in policy analysis. The essays in Volume 2 of The Quest to Understand Human Affairs: Essays on Collective, Constitutional and Epistemic Choice (2012) provide examples of the global reach of his efforts to understand the terms and conditions of political experiments wherever communities of people attempt to govern themselves.

  5. Vincent Ostrom uses the term “art and science of association” with direct acknowledgment of Tocqueville’s extended examination of what citizens in a self-governing society would have to know in order to constitute a self-governing society (1994, pp. 211f.). Ostrom (2008b, pp. 65f.) refers to “democratic administration” as the “rejected alternative” of mainstream scholarship that favors bureaucratic administration. I use “Ostrom’s democratic alternative” in Table 1 below to refer to the whole of his theory of democratic self-government in a limited constitutional republic. McGinnis (2011) delivers a succinct and well-organized summary of Workshop language.

  6. For examples, see Acheson (2003), Blomquist (1992), Gibson (1999), Gibson et al. (2000), and E. Ostrom (1990).

  7. The question appears in the title of Robert Dahl’s seminal study of city government (Dahl 1961).

  8. Isaac is a former Dahl student and serves (2009 to present (2015)) as the Editor In Chief of Perspectives on Politics, a publication of the American Political Science Association.

  9. Fishkin is another former Dahl student who presently (2015) directs the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University. The quote appears in Dahl’s obituary posted on The New York Times website February 7, 2014.

  10. For examples, see Campbell et al. (1980), Green and Gerber (2004), and Nie et al. (1976).

  11. The essay was originally published in Savas (1977) and subsequently reprinted in V. Ostrom (1994).

  12. The Ostroms acknowledge Aristotle for an early description of the problems of common use and Samuelson (1954), Buchanan (1970), and Olson (1965, 1969) for later contributions to describing public goods.

  13. Coase (1960, 1974) made a similar point about the state of the discipline in economics when he wrote of institutional arrangements for providing and producing public goods and “bads” (i.e., social costs).

  14. Buchanan (1975) explores the conceptual basis for politics arising from contractarian (i.e., economically rational) reasoning, showing that multiple pathways to cooperative social orders are conceptually feasible.

  15. Concerning the importance of values and beliefs to effective constitutional limits on the power of governments, Vincent Ostrom and Buchanan appear in complete agreement. According to Buchanan (1975, p. 51), “Whether it is possible to constrain the powers of government… can never be proven empirically. It is at this point, however, that individuals’ attitudes toward reality seem more important than reality itself.”

  16. The passage quoted is reproduced in V. Ostrom (2011 [1991], p. 280).

  17. Hacker and Pierson (2010) provide an engaging example of this mode of argument. Constitutional arrangements subject to criticism include the Electoral College, Senate apportionment, and gerrymandering by state legislatures (Dahl 2002). The body of related commentary is extensive.

  18. The quoted passage by Barbara Allen refers to policymakers in the middle decades of the 20th century who were motivated to consolidate municipal governments by a newfound awareness of the interconnections among environmental, education, and law enforcement problems.

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Acknowledgments

This essay was prepared initially for presentation to the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions and subsequently revised for presentation as part of the Colloquium series at The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Indiana University. The author thanks Danilo Petranovich of the Yale Center for setting that first deadline, Barbara Allen, Trevor Brown, Tyler Carlisle, Nathan O’Neill, Margaret Polski, Matt Potoski, and James Walker for their comments on early drafts, Patty Lezotte for a rich supply of Workshop papers and books without which this essay would not exist, Kate Fotos for proofreading, and Edward Lopez for editorial guidance, for pointing the author to James Buchanan’s work on related topics, and for shepherding this valuable symposium to publication.

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  1. Yale University, P.O. Box 208301, New Haven, CT, 06520-8301, USA

    Michael A. Fotos III

  2. Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA

    Michael A. Fotos III

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Correspondence to Michael A. Fotos III.

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Fotos, M.A. Vincent Ostrom’s revolutionary science of association. Public Choice 163, 67–83 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-015-0235-1

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