Public Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and Self-Governance

In this book Paul Dragos Aligica revisits the theory of political self-governance in the context of recent developments in behavioral economics and political philosophy that have challenged the foundations of this theory. Building on the work of the 'Bloomington School' created by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and Public Choice political economy co-founder Vincent Ostrom, Aligica presents a fresh conceptualization of the key processes at the core of democratic-liberal governance systems involving civic competence and public entrepreneurship. The result is not only a re-assessment and re-articulation of the theories constructed by the Bloomington School of Public Choice, but also a new approach to several cutting-edge discussions relevant to governance studies and applied institutional theory, such as the debates generated by the recent waves of populism, paternalism and authoritarianism.

Introduction; Part I. Public Entrepreneurship: 1. Public entrepreneurship, competitive governance and polycentricity; 2. Entrepreneurship and collective action; 3. Voluntary actions and institutions: charting the territory; Part II. Citizenship: 4. Citizenship, political competence and civics: the Ostromian perspective; 5. From institutionalism to models of social agents: citizenship in institutionalist context; 6. Citizens' competence, self-governance and the new epistocratic paternalism; Part III. Self-Governance: 7. Anarchy, statism and liberalism: the self-governance alternative; 8. Conservatism, interventionism and social evolution: the self-governance alternative; Conclusions.

Building on the work of Nobel Prize in Economics winner Elinor Ostrom, the book revisits the theory of political self-governance in the context of recent developments in social sciences and political philosophy. Aligica presents a fresh conceptualization of self-governance as a response to cutting-edge challenges of populism, paternalism and authoritarianism. 

Paul Dragos Aligica is a Senior Research Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Virginia, where he teaches in the Economics Department. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was a student of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. He has published extensively on institutional and governance theory, being the author of six books and numerous academic articles, exploring both the foundational and the applied side of alternative governance systems.