Vincent Ostrom

The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry

Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government†are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions†and “overlapping jurisdictions.†Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern†and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.†The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework†for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua†is one name for it.

A Behavioral Approach to the Study of Intergovernmental Relations

The study of intergovernmental relationships re quires a systemic approach to phenomena involving the inter action of many large-scale organizations. The concept of an industry, borrowed from economics, is used to characterize a set of interrelated public enterprises which makes use of a com mon body of knowledge and methods in the production of similar goods or services. The disparity of interests within an industry is related to diversity in the organization of separate enterprises in a public industry. The problem of regulating the interrelationships among numerous public agencies functioning in a public industry is then considered. Study of the structure, conduct, and performance of different public industries which form a part of the American public enterprise system offers an approach to the systemic study of intergovernmental relation ships.

Public Choice Theory: A New Approach to Institutional Economics

The primary preoccupation of public choice theory has been with nonmarket decision making and thus with public choice, not market choice. Economists recognize that market institutions have serious limitations and that an array of goods and services will be supplied through instrumentalities of government in one form or another. Unfortunately, institutions of government are also subject to institutional weaknesses and failures. Reliance upon governmental authority to correct for problems of market weakness need not lead to an improvement in welfare. References to market institutions, to governmental institutions, and to problems of institutional weakness and failure suggest a preoccupation in public choice theory that is akin to the work of institutional economists. The kinship in interest is, however, accompanied by substantial disparity in method. Contemporary public choice theorists are more likely to be grounded in the microeconomic theory associated with the Chicago School than are the traditional institutional economists.

Epistemic choice and public choice

At the intersection of anthropology, ecomomics, law, political science, public administration, and sociology, a sufficient body of literature had accumulated from interdisciplinary research efforts by the mid-1960s to offer a new approach to the study of public decision making. Those inquiries were stimulated by a growing awareness that problems of institutional weaknesses and failures in market arrangements could not be corrected simply by recourse to governmental decision processes which were themselves subject to serious limits. How did we develop a better understanding of structure and performance in the “public sector”? What were the limits applicable to collective choice and its relationship to collective action? Now, in the presence of three of four decades of cumulative efforts, how does one assess the prospects over the next generation?

Citizen-Sovereigns: The Source of Contestability, the Rule of Law, and the Conduct of Public Entrepreneurship

It was my good fortune to have known John Gaus and to have attended a lecture course and participated in a seminar that he offered in 1949. His Alabama lectures entitled Reflections on Public Administration , published in 1947, included such titles as “The Ecology of Government” and “Politics and Administration.” His concluding chapter, written after the initial presentations, was entitled “A Theory of the Process of Government.” Gaus was broadly engaged in reflections about the place of public administration in systems of governance and the constitution of order in human societies. The author is appreciative of detailed comments by Paul Aligica, Barbara Allen, Krister Andersson, Robert Bish, Sheldon Gellar, Stephan Kuhnert, Michael McGinnis, Elinor Ostrom, Andrew Revelle, Filippo Sabetti, Amos Sawyer, Sujai Shivakumar, Mark Sproule-Jones, and Lihua Yang.

Problems of Cognition as a Challenge to Policy Analysts and Democratic Societies

Tocqueville offers an analysis of how cognitive limits and distortions are likely to place democracies at risk. Similar problems exist in policy analysis. Theoretical discourse, which increasingly distances itself from social reality, yields a large gap between theory and practice. A language which specifies elements and relationships for addressing multiple levels and units of analysis in analysing problematical situations and exploring alternative possibilities offers the prospect of being a better, though imperfect, tool for reckoning.

Multiorganizational Arrangements in the Governance of Unitary and Federal Political Systems

The longer-term agenda of the core participants in this conference has focused upon the problem of addressing multiorganizational and interorganizational arrangements as a level of analysis. At recent meetings in Bloomington (1981) and in Berlin (1982), we were concerned with efforts to identify the multiplicity of both public and private organizations that interact with one another to organize: (1) the demand and supply aspects of public-service delivery systems and (2) the implementation of public policies. Modern developed societies rely upon complexly organized networks of multiorganizational arrangements to accomplish social tasks and this requires a self-conscious effort to address such arrangements as distinct levels of analysis and to develop analytical methods that are appropriate for that level of analysis. Primary attention was given to the use of “industry structures” and “implementation structures” as modes of analysis developed by collegues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (Bloomington) and the International Institute of Management (Berlin).

Nonhierarchical Approaches to the Organization of Public Activity

Recent emphasis on the management of intergovernmental relations raises questions about patterns of governance in a federal system that rely more upon the nonhierarchical modes of organization implied by management principles. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, explicitly recognized that the American system of administration relied on nonhierarchical methods of control that manifest an invisible-hand effect in the exercise of administrative power. Modern developments in public choice theory provide another explanation for nonhierarchical patterns of organization in a public economy. Such modes of organization are consistent with the patterns of multiorganizational arrangement that one would expect to occur in a federal system of administration, in contrast to a bureaucratic system of administration.

The Institutional Perspective on Values and Virtues

Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, Kant, and the American federalists all sought ways to understand how to create values and virtues in the public sector. Montesquieu expressed the basic anomaly in a straightforward way. Virtue is the basic motive governing republics in which each individual is presumed to be self-governing and the legislative power is presumed to reside in the whole community. But to prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary that the architecture of authority relationships be fashioned on the principle that ‘power should be used to check power’. Madison, in Essay 51 of The Federalist, expressed the same principle in the following language: This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State. (n.d. [1788]: 338)

The Political Structure of a Small Community

The Political Structure of a Small Community Author(s): Robert E. Agger and Vincent Ostrom Source: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1, Special Issue on Studies in Political Communication (Spring, 1956), pp. 81-89 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2746554 Accessed: 04/04/2010 08:22