|
Abstract:
|
"In this paper I explore the implications of Vincent Ostrom’s concept of a republic for the model used to explain individual behavior in institutional analysis. Vincent viewed the core of the republic (res publica) as an 'open public realm' that allows individual citizens to participate meaningfully in the process of governance (1991). Moreover, his account of individual choice draws on Tocqueville’s account of 'self-interest rightly understood' in Democracy in America (Volume II, Second Book Chapter VIII 945/1835). The public realm in the U.S. is created and sustained by constitutional liberties accorded to individuals, including the liberties of speech, press, and assembly, as articulated in the First Amendment. The purpose of these liberties is primarily public rather than private. While contemporary liberalism has stressed the importance of constitutional liberties as the bulwark of privacy values, the traditional republican standpoint stresses the importance of the use of liberty in the public realm. My plan in this essay is to show how the public use of liberty in a republic necessarily depends on something very much like Tocqueville’s account of self-interest."
|