2024/01/01 by Paul Lewis, Paul Dragos Aligică · 3 voices · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · #Complex Systems and Decision Making
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1744137424000079
openalex publication_date 2024/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This paper reveals a novel and perhaps surprising ingredient in the mix of influences that inspired and informed the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom on self-governance: cybernetics, understood as a theory of control via feedback mechanisms. Based on this crucial insight, the paper portrays self-governance as involving an architecture of multiple levels of so-called ‘second order’ feedback mechanisms. Such compounded systems of organization are the key to understanding any self-governance process and the paper argues that their intrinsic logic provides a critical link between the work of the Ostroms and the public choice and constitutional political economy perspectives on institutional order. The paper thereby offers both a fresh perspective on the Ostromian view of self-governance and also of also of governance theory in general.