A Quiet Revolution: Rethinking the Foundations of Human Society

Abstract

"This paper is partly autobiographical, partly about the way Vincent Ostrom introduced many graduate students to the quest for understanding human affairs and partly a combination of the two in the form of a prologue of work being done in response to Vincent's enduring challenge to do theory rather than talk about theory. The first part of the paper offers a retrospective view of why the challenge posed by Vincent had revolutionary proportions as it prepared new generations of graduate students and led to the way for the political science that was yet to come. The rest of the paper suggests that the tradition of critical inquiry that Vincent continued was not just confined to Tocqueville in France but extended to Italy and Switzerland. The challenge is to recover similar traditions in other parts of Europe and the world."