Roberta Herzberg, Former president of the Public Choice Society talks about the ability of people to self-govern, which is the emphasis of the Bloomington School of Political Economy, that so frequently in political science and economics is believed to have negative consequences.
"Theorists assume that you would find yourself in periods of tragedy because people would follow these narrowly based self-interested rules.”
Herzberg says, Elinor and Vincent Ostrom - the head of the Bloomington School - discovered people were actually able to resolve social dilemmas, and developed the rules and strategies that worked best. Elinor received a Nobel Prize because she combined good economic theory with field research and proposed 8 important design principles that helped people organize for themselves, based on her research.
Finally she talks about how to differentiate the Bloomington's approach with collectivist approaches and explains the School’s individual perspective in common interest topics.
