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This book discusses some of the most challenging ideas emerging out of the research program on institutional diversity associated with the 2009 co-recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in economics, Elinor Ostrom, while outlining a set of new research directions and an original interpretation of the significance and future of this program.

Abstract:The "new institutionalist revolution" in social sciences has led to a repositioning of social norms to the forefront of the pre-analytic vision in institutional theory and to the consolidation of the contextual analysis approach. That has significant epistemological, methodological, and political philosophy implications. This essay follows the logic of these developments showing: (a) why they inherently lead to the feasibility problem, the key of applied theory, toward which both contemporary philosophy and institutional analysis converge from different venues; (b) how feasibility is a nexus of empirical, counterfactual, normative, and contextual elements, that is, something more complex than a mere matching between empirical reality and institutional design; (c) what are the governance implications of all of the above, with an emphasis on an alternative approach (distinctive enough to circumvent both the conservative averseness to intervene and progressive drastic interventionism) and in which the public choice process is seen mainly as endogenized, socialized, and institutionalized, as opposed to formalized, intellectualized, and externalized.

This article argues that despite the widespread perception to the contrary, it is possible to articulate a classical liberal position on public administration that recognizes and confronts the problems of collective governance in the public domain, as opposed to either circumventing them or imposing institutional designs and policy standards not fully in accordance with the nature and structure of the collective phenomena in case. As such, the article revisits, clarifies, and elaborates a classical liberal inspired perspective on the problem of collective action and public governance, arguing for its distinctiveness while articulating its basic conceptual and theoretical elements.

This article explores the Ostroms' perspective on nonprofit enterprises and on the place of the "third sector" within the broader ecology of governmental, for-profit, and nonprofit forms of social organization, focusing on three levels: the micro level based on a taxonomical analysis of the nature of (quasi)public goods and of the implications of their heterogeneity for their provision and consumption through nonprofit arrangements (with a special focus on the notion of "coproduction"); the mezzo level—the analysis of the various organizational structures emerging around (quasi)public goods dealt with by compounded units of production, provision, and consumption (with a focus on the notion of "public economy"); and the macro level—the introduction of the notion of "polycentricity" as a meta-framework inviting a reconceptualization of the relationships between the for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental organizations in diverse and dynamic institutional environments.

The article outlines the contours of an "Austrian"-theory-inspired perspective on the study of non-profit and voluntary social processes and institutions while using as a background and vehicle the Austrian economics criticism of mainstream neoclassical economics. The argument proceeds in two steps: First, it focuses on the explicit and implicit role welfare economics theory and efficiency/optimality models have come to assume in theorizing essential aspects of the non-profit sector. It points out the intrinsic limits of neoclassical economics in this respect. Second, it follows the logical implications of the arguments advanced in the first step to the reconstitution of a broader theory of social order that (a) circumvents the incapacitating reliance on maximization models of rationality and general equilibrium logic and that (b) pivots in a natural way on the notions of voluntary social actions, associations, and processes.