Form and Substance in a Theory of Human Association : Vincent Ostrom’s Democratic Theorizing

This paper uses Vincent Ostrom’s treatment of democracy as entailing a Faustian bargain to explore some challenges that confront his research program into the theory of human association. To carry this exploration, I concentrate on Ostrom’s 1997 book, The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. Ostrom recognized that the same formal theory could unfold in a variety of substantive directions. Ostrom worked with an ill-ordered soul and not a well-ordered utility function. Hence, both conflict and cooperation are endemic in human societies, with the crooked timber of humanity never allowing any good thing ever to be permanent. Ostrom was a realist and not a utopian with respect to the potential for human association. He contrasted a notion of genuine democracy with the faux-democratic ideas that are in promiscuous play today. As for the prospects for genuine democracy, Ostrom would surely have counseled a sober realism