The Study of Man. By Michael Polanyi. Price, $1.75. Pp. 102. University of Chicago Press, 5750 Ellis Ave., Chicago 37, 1959. One subtitle to Polanyi's challenging and fascinating book might be The Evolution and Natural History of Error , for Polanyi is at pains to expunge what he believes to be the false notion contained in the contemporary view of science which treats it as an object and basically impersonal discipline. According to Polanyi not only is this a radical and important error, but it is harmful to the objectives of science itself. Another subtitle could be Farewell to Detachment , for in place of cold objectivity he develops the idea that science is necessarily intensely personal. It is a human endeavor and human point of view which cannot be divorced from nor uprooted out of the human matrix from which it arises and in which it works. For a good while

Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

Anarchy, state, and utopia

Governing the Commons

This article provides an overview of the structure and evolution of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and a short introduction to its use by scholars to analyze a diversity of puzzles. It then addresses the relationship of IAD to a more complex framework for the analysis of social-ecological systems and concludes with a short discussion of future challenges facing IAD scholars.

Background on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

The course is focused on historical texts, most of them philosophical. Context for understanding the texts and the course of democratic development will be provided in lecture and discussions, and by some background readings (Dunn). We begin with the remarkable Athenian democracy, and its frequent enemy the Spartan oligarchy. In Athens legislation was passed directly by an assembly of all citizens, and executive officials were selected by lot rather than by competitive election. Athenian oligarchs such as Plato more admired Sparta, and their disdain for the democracy became the judgment of the ages, until well after the modern democratic revolutions. Marsilius of Padua in the early Middle Ages argued for popular sovereignty. The Italian citystates of the Middle Ages did without kings, and looked back to Rome and Greece for republican models. During the English Civil War republicans debated whether the few or the many should be full citizens of the regime. The English, French, and American revolutions struggled with justifying and establishing a representative democracy suitable for a large state, and relied on election rather than lot to select officials. The English established a constitutional monarchy, admired in Europe, and adapted by the Americans in their republican constitution. The American Revolution helped inspire the French, and the French inspired republican and democratic revolution throughout Europe during the 19 century.

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Democracy and Its Critics

The article overviews and elaborates the concept of polycentricity, defined as a structural feature of social systems of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules. The article starts by introducing the concept as it was advanced by Michael Polanyi and developed by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It continues introducing possible instances of polycentricity as well as related notions, as part of an attempt to further elaborate the concept through a concept design approach that systematically applies the logic of necessary and sufficient conditions. The article concludes by arguing that the polycentricity conceptual framework is not only a robust analytical structure for the study of complex social phenomena, but is also a challenging method of drawing non-ad hoc analogies between different types of self-organizing complex social systems.

Polycentricity: From Polanyi to Ostrom, and Beyond

Introduction Part 1: From Metropolitan Reform to a Theory of Governance Systems: The Origins and Main Themes of the Bloomington Research Program 1. Political Economy, Polycentricity and the Metropolitan Reform Debate 2. Crossing the Great Divide: The Nature of Public Economies Part 2: The "Human Condition" and the Foundations of Social Order: Elements of a Social Philosophy of Institutionalism 3. Knowledge and Institutions: Developing a Social Philosophy of Institutional Order and Change 4. Ideas, Language and Meaning: Ontological and Epistemological Foundations of Institutional Order and Institutional Analysis Part 3: The Bloomington School in its Intellectual Context: A Family of Themes and Schools of Thought 5. Competing Disciplines, Methodological Divides and Emerging Research Agendas: The Bloomington School in its Interdisciplinary Setting 6. Public Policy Analysis, Public Choice and the Old "New Science of Politics" Conclusions: A Science of Association, a Science of Citizenship, a Science of Liberty. Postscript: Rethinking Institutional Analysis and Development. Dialogues with Vincent and Elinor Ostrom

Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School

Despite its importance and its widespread employment in policymaking practice, the theoretical and epistemic foundations of institutional mapping have not been elaborated and its legitimacy is yet to be fully granted by the academic community. This paper is a contribution to this overdue effort. The paper has two parts. First it introduces mapping as a cognitive process and explore in this context the structural similarities between maps and theories. While doing that it identifies the basic elements of mapping as a cognitive procedure and based on that it outlines the optimal features of the possible meta-theories framing policy-oriented institutional mapping. The second part goes a step further and discusses two concrete examples that may come close to illustrate the meta-theoretical ideal-type outlined at the end of the first part: the theoretical system implied in the Chicago School of sociology and the Institutional Analysis and Development framework inspired by the new institutional economics.

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Institutional and Stakeholder Mapping: Frameworks for Policy Analysis and Institutional Change

Revisiting the theory of institutional hybridity and diversity developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom to cope with the challenge of the “neither states nor markets” institutional domain, this article reconstructs the Ostromian system along the “value heterogeneity–co-production–polycentricity” axis. It articulates the elements of a theory of value heterogeneity and of the fuzzy boundaries between private and public. It rebuilds the model of co-production, clarifying the ambiguity surrounding a key technical public choice theoretical assumption, and it demonstrates (a) why it should not be confused with the Alchian-Demsetz team production model and (b) how co-production engenders a type of market failure that has been neglected so far. In light of this analysis, the article reconsiders polycentricity, the capstone of the Ostromian system, explaining why polycentricity may be seen as a solution both to this co-production market failure problem and to the problems of social choice in conditions of deep heterogeneity. It also discusses further normative corollaries.

Co-Production, Polycentricity, and Value Heterogeneity: The Ostroms’ Public Choice Institutionalism Revisited

Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Institutional Diversity, Heterogeneity, and Institutional Theory Chapter 2: Institutionalism and Polycentricity Chapter 3: Institutional Mapping and the IAD Framework Chapter 4: Institutional Resilience and Institutional Theory Chapter 5: Institutional Design, Ideas, and Predictability Chapter 6: Institutionalism and Pragmatism Conclusion Bibliography

Paul Dragos Aligica

Papers

Polycentricity: From Polanyi to Ostrom, and Beyond

Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School

Institutional and Stakeholder Mapping: Frameworks for Policy Analysis and Institutional Change

Co-Production, Polycentricity, and Value Heterogeneity: The Ostroms’ Public Choice Institutionalism Revisited

Institutional Diversity and Political Economy: The Ostroms and Beyond