Re: Decentralization & Hierarchy

At 06:06 PM 1/23/01 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>----------
>>From: "Richard K. Moore" <richard@cyberjournal.org>
>> My intuition and experience leads me to suspect that
>> decentralization is actually more efficient, besides
>> providing political advantages.
>BE:
>I think your intuition was matched by Smith on whose book "The Wealth of
>Nations" the market system was founded.  He believed that many small
>producers competing with one another would lead to the pest products and the
>lowest price.  Unfortunatley only part of his book become the back bont of
>the current economic system, and the current society.  That is the one part
>of it "competion."  Now accepted as greed.
>Bill Ellis
>
>


There is a literature in economics called transaction cost economics that
attempts to specify the conditions under which either hierarchy is an
efficient  means of managing the problems of resource scarcity and
information complexity.  A state of the art work in that literature is 

Williamson, Oliver E.  The mechanisms of governance.  New York : Oxford
University Press, 1996. 


In contrast, political scientist Elinor Ostrom has been working in recent
years about institutional arrangements for managing common property
resources (e.g., the ocean, the environment, etc.).  Her recent article in
the March 2000 issue of _PS, Political Science and Politics_ provides a
response to widely accepted arguments for centralization of political
control.  

Ostrom, Elinor.  "The danger of self-evident truths."  _PS, Political
Science and Politics_ 33, no. 1 (March 2000):  32-44.


--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
2140 Derby Hall
154 North Oval Mall
Columbus, Ohio 43210

(o) 614/292-2880
(h) 614/688-0567

Email:  Beatty.4@osu.edu
______________________________________________________   
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