Polycentricity: Studies in Institutional Diversity and Voluntary Governance | Rowman & Littlefield
Polycentricity: Studies in Institutional Diversity and Voluntary Governance
This interdisciplinary series explores the varieties of social institutions, processes, and patterns of governance that emerge through individuals’ coordination, cooperation, and competition in governance systems based on freedom of choice, freedom of exchange, and freedom of association. Under conditions of relative freedom of association, human diversity leads to institutional diversity and polycentric structures. In contrast to monocentric, unitary, and hierarchical command and control systems, polycentric social systems comprise many decision centers interacting freely under an overarching set of common rules. First introduced by Michael Polanyi as a descriptive and normative feature of free societies and further elaborated by Nobel Prize in Economics recipient Elinor Ostrom and public choice political economy co-founder Vincent Ostrom, the notion of polycentricity has proven itself able to offer a powerful analytical framework for expanding our understanding of the operation of governance regimes, constitutional federalism, law, public administration, private ordering, civics and citizenship, subsidiarity, nonprofit organization, cultural pluralism, civil society and entrepreneurship. Studies in this series will refine the conceptual framework of polycentricity and its governance theory implications, while expanding their application in the study of what Alexis de Tocqueville called the art and science of association. These studies should be of interest to scholars, policymakers, executives, social entrepreneurs, and citizens working to devise ways of living together harmoniously in civil societies.


Editor(s): Lenore T. Ealy & Paul Dragos Aligica
Advisory Board: Peter Boettke, George Mason University; Aurelian Craiutu, Indiana University; Laurent Dobuzinskis, Simon Fraser University; David P. Ellerman, University of California, Riverside; Robert F. Garnett, Jr., Texas Christian University; Samuel Gregg, Acton Institute; Steven Grosby, Clemson University; Bobbi Herzberg, George Mason University; Heather Wood Ion, The Epidemic of Health; Peter Levine, Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University; Paul Lewis, King’s College London; Adam J. MacLeod, Faulkner University; Adam Martin, Texas Tech University; Jason Potts, RMIT University; David L. Prychitko, Northern Michigan University, Filippo Sabetti, McGill University; Virgil Storr, George Mason University; Edward Stringham, Trinity College and American Institute for Economic Research; Frederick Turner, University of Texas, Dallas; Richard Wagner, George Mason University; Richard Helmholz, University of Chicago Law School
Staff editorial contact: Alexandra Rallo (arallo@rowman.com)