Quest to Understand Human Affairs

The Quest to Understand Human Affairs presents fifty previously unpublished essays by Vincent Ostrom on the U.S. Government's environmental problems and resource governance and span the six decades of Ostrom's career in political science and public administration. Including everything from a 1947 essay on Western (U.S) issues in national politics to ending with a 2004 manuscript on Constitutional foundations and federal institutional forms, these essays examine significant developments in administration, constitutional design, and the evolution of theory and practice in the field of institutional analysis and development during the second half of the twentieth century and first decade of the new millennium. Political theorist, Barbara Allen, has edited the work and provided extensive notes that provide context and identify key events and persons cited in the works. These remarkable works not only offer specialists insight into developments in the fields of institutional analysis, resource governance, policy and administration, but also speak to general readers about worldwide transformations in democracies and human and environmental relations as well as the enduring challenge of sustaining just, productive political orders.

Vincent Ostrom is one of the most original and powerful minds of our time. His quest to understand human affairs spans an unusually wide range of theoretical and practical concerns and draws creatively on a long tradition of classical thinkers. His unpublished papers in this volume, ably put together and edited by Barbara Allen, were written over the course of four decades but have lost none of their immediacy and authority. They convey strongly the commitment, tenacity and versatility of Ostrom in grappling with fundamental issues in the study of natural resources policy, community and collective and constitutional choice and, more generally, in the practice of research. The volume also conveys Allen's own contribution in making Ostrom's experiences and reflections available to those who wish to better understand the critical questions of our time. The result is a significant and lasting contribution to social and human sciences., This collection of original and previously unpublished papers is of both of historical and contemporary value. Vincent Ostrom has long become one of the pioneers, founders, and leading scholars in institutional analysis, governance theory, public administration and human natural resource management. The book is an ode to original and independent scholarship. It provides documentation of a branch of contemporary, interdisciplinary science in the making. The perspective and inspirational value provided by the set of policy briefs and scholarly papers is supported by the annotation and strong organization of the book by Barbara Allen as knowledgeable, able and keenly devoted editor., Well-intentioned policies can destroy the very resource they are designed to protect when they are inappropriate in scale or context. Like Madison and Tocqueville before him, Vincent Ostrom's writings emerge from a dialogue between practice and reflection, resulting in a bottom-up, polycentric approach to institutional design that avoids the failures of top-down hierarchical models. Each essay is absorbing; through this collection, with thoughtful editorial introductions, Vincent Ostrom's teachings illuminate and inspire.

Vincent Ostrom is the founding director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and Arthur F. Bentley Professor Emeritus of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington. Barbara Allen is professor of political science at Carleton College.