Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School Aligica, Boettke

Introduction rom Geroge Mason of the Ostroms, with focus on their philosophical roots, and on Vincent's big picturing.

For instance, Stigler's comment that he is accustomed to find that "the activity in an industry with a complex technology is usually efficiently conducted by a firm smaller by almost any measure than the government of a town of 25,000" introduces the notion of optimum scale of performance in a way that is easily translated in the metropolitan problem area ... Ostrom and his associates hammered the vital fact that the optimum scale of performance is not the same for all urban public goods and services and that some services may be produced "more efficiently on a large scale while other services may be produced more efficiently on a small scale" (E. Ostrom 1972 in McGinnis 1999b; Oakerson 1999; V Ostrom et al 1988) p.12
He insisted that "no marketing system can function without a legal framework which guarantees adequate proprietary powers and enforces contracts" (Polanyi 1951, 185) p.26
How do fragmented systems of local government induce efficiency? (Oakerson and Parks 1988 in McGinnnis 1999b, 308) p.49
(in discussion of threats) "...Bloomington School is built around a series of concepts such as adaptability, choice, learning, knowledge, ideas and rules. Together they map the dynamics f an evolutionary process. They are the "primitives or the axioms of social organization". p60
social order consists of organizational arrangements that "can be thought of as nothing more or less than decision-making arrangements" (V. Ostrom 1973a, 3) p.69

V Ostrom introduced four threats to an institution the constrain the space of possible institutions. These are elaborated on p58: