As Subtle as it is Profound

In my Constitutional Economics class tonight we are discussing Vincent Ostrom's The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracy: A Response to Tocqueville's Challenge (U of Michigan Press, 1997).  I haven't read the book cover to cover in 3 years, but as I returned to it for preparation for tonight's class I realized just how much I missed in my first reading of the work.  In my Constitutional class we have been reading Smith, Hume, Hayek and of course Buchanan.  These authors are surely on my short list of the most profound writers in the field of political economy.  But I think Vincent Ostrom might have a claim to be the most subtle of them all.  His style of reasoning is certainly unassuming and the topics he tackles are as profound as any in the field of political theory.  Ostrom states: "My effort is to deepen the foundations implicit in Tocqueville's analysis so that we might recognize the theoretical merit of Tocqueville's achievements and begin to explore potentials for crafting democratic societies built on principles of self-governance.  Our challenge is to create 'freer institutions' rather than to 'stretch ourselves at the feet of a single master'.  Democracies are viable only under limited conditions; and finding ways of meeting those conditions are the necessary means for achieving democratic ways of life." (p. 30)

"Democratic societies," Ostrom concludes, "are vulnerable to an unlimited pursuit of strategic opportunism when peoples are spared the cares of thinking and the troubles of living. ... If everyone were bent on the pursuit of strategic opportunities at the cost of everyone else, the cumulative result would be the trampling of civilization underfoot.  Problems of deception, self-deception, and strategic pursuits can only be alleviated by extended experience in coping with problems in artisanship-artifactual relationships.  If individuals can learn to become master-artisans capable of working with other master artisans in open artisanship-artifact relationships, they have the potential for becoming self-governing.  The challenge in democratic societies is to extend the horizons of knowledge and skills by learning to work with others in ways that enhance error-correcting capabilities, rather than fabricating patterns of deception and self-deception to tranquillize, tease, and terrorize the mind into states of helplessness." (p. 271)