The Failure Of The Centralized State: Institutions And Selfgovernance In Africa

Ostrom, Vincent

Harbeson, John W

Olowu, Dele

Wunsch, James

Reference

Routledge

We struggle in the modern age to preserve individual freedoms and social self-government in the face of large and powerful governments that lay claim to the symbols and language of democracy, according to Vincent Ostrom. Arguing that democratic systems are characterized by self-governing--not state- governed--societies, Ostrom contends that the nature and strength of individual relationships and self-organizing behavior are critical to the creation and survival of a democratic political system. Ostrom begins with a basic contradiction identified by Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville suggested that if citizens acted on the basis of their natural inclinations they would expect government to provide for them and take care of their needs. Yet these conditions contradict what it means to be self-governing. Ostrom explores the social and cultural context necessary for a democratic system to flourish emphasizing the important role of ideas and the use of language in defining and understanding political life. Discussing differences in the ideas about social organization among various cultural and intellectual traditions, he considers the difficulties encountered over time in building democratic societies in America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. He outlines lessons from these experiences for the efforts to build democracy in the developing world and the countries emerging from communism. Based on a lifetime of thinking about the social conditions necessary to support a democracy, this book makes a significant contribution to the recent discussion about civil society and the fragility of our formal and informal social institutions and will be of interest to social scientists, historians and all readers concerned with the state of democracy in the modern world. Vincent Ostrom is Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science Emeritus and Co-Director of the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University. He is the author of many works on political theory and public administration.

The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerabilities of Democracies: A Response to Tocqueville's Challenge

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

University of Michigan Press

The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies: A Response to Tocqueville's Challenge

Univ of Michigan Pr

The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment

The Political Theory of a Compound Republic presents the essential logic of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton's design of limited, distributed, constitutional authority proposed inThe Federalist. Two revised and expanded ensuing chapters show how the idea of constitutional choice has been employed since the adoption of the 1789 Constitution of the United States. A new concluding chapter questions commonly accepted beliefs about sovereign nation-states and considers governance from the perspective of twenty-first century 'citizen-sovereigns.'

Legal Theory & Systems

Lexington Books

Rules & Procedures

Univ of Nebraska Pr

Book by Wunsch, James, Olowu, Dele, *, Editors, Harbeson, John W, Ostrom, Vincent, Insulza, Jose M

The Failure Of The Centralized State: Institutions And Self-governance In Africa (WESTVIEW SPECIAL STUDIES ON AFRICA)

History

EDITORS

Insulza, Jose M

Africa

Westview Press

The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration

Allen, Barbara

University Alabama Press

This revised and expanded third edition extends Ostrom’s analysis to account for the most resent developments in American politics, including those of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Local Government in the United States

Ics Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ostrom, Vincent. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ostrom, Vincent