Book Review: Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective: Political Economy Foundations by Aligica, P. D., Boettke, P. J., & Tarko, V.

Abstract

This fascinating book calls upon public administration to reorganize and reconstruct its governance and institutional principles on a positive doctrine of public governance based on the classical-liberal ethos. Drawing upon insights from Austria, Virginia, and Bloomington Schools of Political Economy, Aligica, Boettke, and Tarko attempt to bridge the classicalliberal view of political economy, new institutionalism, and public choice with public administration. The book is an endeavor to answer some of the most crucial metaquestions facing the audience in the field of public administration, such as what is the viable role of government in a democratic society? What is the suitable range of government activities and legitimate tools, instruments, and procedures for governing collective affairs? The authors explore the answers to these questions by identifying and exploring the classical-liberal conceptual framework, tools, features, and procedures of the administration of collective affairs. This framework is grounded in “individualism, freedom of choice, freedom of association” (p.25). The authors build and develop their argument by addressing the issue of collective coordination in the public sector through a polycentric understanding of multiple nodes of competing powers. The book is divided into 3 sections and 11 chapters. In section one, “A Distinctive Perspective on Governance,” Aligica, Boettke, and Tarko emphasize the ever-changing logic of the private and public relationships based on Normative Individualism and Public Choice. Building on the work of scholars and philosophers such as F.A. Hayek, James Buchanan, and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, they explore the public administration field from the angle of “freedom of choice, voluntary association, knowledge, and learning, adaptability and resilience” to find a solution for the knowledge and power problems related to bureaucratic public administration based on “authority, hierarchy, and control” (p.80). The classical-liberal governance approach invites us to govern with citizens; “see like a citizen” rather than rule over citizens; “see like a state” (p.24). Without prioritizing individuals and their choices, there is no democratic view of public administration. As a result, they offer the notion of “Dynamic Governance” as “an adaptive institutional system” that can capture the ever-changing nature of the collective affairs based on “private-public mixed arrangements, quasi-markets, quasi-governments, and nonprofit and civil society organizations” rather than “pure market or a pure government” (p.122). Public governance can often be carried out through civic/ civil society organizations or the third sector. These institutions can limit social conflicts and satisfy the preferences of people who are directly impacted by programs and policies. Based on this view, local knowledge embedded in the complexities of our everyday life plays a critical role. They argue that in contrast to top-down direct government control, co-production with citizens and bottom-up governance is essential for “solving the knowledge problem” (p.130) by empowering people to access local, and often tacit, knowledge of time and place. Section two, “Public Choice and Public Administration,” begins with a chapter mapping the foundations of public choice as the leading carrier of the classical-liberal ethos, and merging it with public administration literature and its evolution. In the next two chapters, Aligica, Boettke, and Tarko provide context and relevance on how the classicalliberal theory of governance based on “individuals (as normative and analytical units), voluntary association, and selfgovernance” (p. 153). This is accomplished by discussing Vincent and Elinor Ostrom’s scholarship on new Institutionalism and a democratic understanding of public administration as a self-governing arrangement that supports self-governance, competition, pluralism, and polycentricity. Self-governance is structured in response to the classicalliberal understanding of public governance by taking the knowledge and power problems seriously. It offers innovative tools for resource provision in some policy areas regarding collective action dilemmas. A prosperous self-governing arrangement provides its members with the most significant possible opportunity to set rules and live under them while at the same time upholding a broad sense of community. But for that to happen, individuals have to play a critical role in creating those rules (co-production of rules). In this case, public governance is more about social processes driven by individual incentives and the governance of spontaneous orders rather than ideal types and end states. It is about the decisions, institutions, and procedures between the private and the public interface. Each chapter Book review