Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective: Political Economy Foundations

Classical liberalism entails not only a theory about the scope of government and its relationship with the market but also a distinct view about how government should operate within its proper domain of public choices in non-market settings. Building on the political economy principles underpinning the works of diverse authors such as Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, this book challenges the technocratic-epistocratic perspective in which social goals are defined by an aggregated social function and experts simply provide the means to attain them. The authors argue that individualism, freedom of choice, and freedom of association have deep implications on how we design, manage and assess our public governance arrangements. The book examines the knowledge and incentive problems associated with bureaucratic public administration while contrasting it with democratic governance. Aligica, Boettke, and Tarko argue that the focus should be on the diversity of opinions in any society regarding "what should be done" and on the design of democratic and polycentric institutions capable of limiting social conflicts and satisfying the preferences of as many people as possible. They thus fill a large gap in the literature, the public discourse, and the ways decision makers understand the nature and administration of the public sector.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Acknowledgments Part I: A Distinctive Perspective on Governance: The Building Blocks Chapter 1: Classical Liberalism: Delineating Its Theory of Governance Chapter 2: Function, Structure, and Process at the Private-Public Interface Chapter 3: Dynamic Governance: The Polycentrism Process and Knowledge Processes Part II: Public Choice and Public Administration: The Confluence Chapter 4: Public Administration and Public Choice: Charting the Field Chapter 5: Public Choice, Public Administration, and Self-Governance: The Ostromian Confluence Chapter 6: Heterogeneity, Coproduction, and Polycentric Governance: The Ostroms' Public Choice Institutionalism Revisited Part III: Framing the Applied Level: Themes, Issue Areas, and Cases Chapter 7: Metropolitan Governance: Polycentric Solutions for Complex Problems Chapter 8: Independent Regulatory Agencies and Their Reform: An Exercise in Institutional Imagination Chapter 9: Polycentric Stakeholder Analysis: Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Conclusions: Governance and Public Management: A Vindication of the Classical-Liberal Perspective?

About the Author :
Paul Dragos Aligica is Senior Research Fellow at the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Professor of Administrative Sciences at the University of Bucharest. Peter J. Boettke is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University and the Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center. Vlad Tarko is Assistant Professor of Economics at Dickinson College

Review :
"This book offers a bold new framework for studying public administration. It incorporates the best ideas that have been developed in the political economy tradition and applies them in innovative ways to perennial problems about governance and the state. A must-read." -- David Skarbek, Brown University "This is a marvelous and sophisticated restatement of the classical liberal program. Aligica, Boettke, and Tarko demonstrate that classical liberalism, rather than being a doctrine of anti-government, is a sophisticated theory of public governance-one based on the appreciation of individual diversity, institutional complexity, and the resources of civil society." -- Gerald Gaus, James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona "Paul Aligica, Peter Boettke and Vlad Tarko take us on an illuminating theoretical and empirical journey in the study of public governance more generally. They explore the multiple layers of both the economic and political institutional framework that can make a society work well and the social choice processes that are available to meet the challenges of polycentric governance and equity. They combine a fresh analytical and historical perspective on understanding the meaning and limits of self-governance and the experience of collective coordination and administration through a careful analysis of themes, issues areas and cases that go beyond the American case. In so doing, they offer a compelling and original account of the evolving relations between classical liberalism and modernity, equity and governance, and democratic versus bureaucratic administration" -- Filippo Sabetti, McGill University