The article overviews and elaborates the concept of polycentricity, defined as a structural feature of social systems of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules. The article starts by introducing the concept as it was...

This article is a contribution to the development of the epistemological foundations of Futures Studies. The article starts by presenting the conventional “covering-law” model asserting the symmetry between prediction and explanation, a model that continues to undermine the authority of...

Applying a form of “indirect strategy,” Jullien has opened up an alternative to the attempts to reduce strategy to a quasiscience, with laws and regularities, a science ready to be packaged as a mass consumption intellectual good. The originality of Jullien's thought is thus paradoxical: to...

The article discusses Olaf Helmer's contribution to the development of futures studies by focusing on four basic theses defining his approach. (1) Quasi-laws in social sciences and futures studies can in fact be treated in the same way that the natural laws of the physical sciences. (2) In order...

The notion that state capitalism (an economic system “in which the state functions as the leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain”) is a new form of capitalism emerging in the global arena has been recently advanced by several authors. This paper explores the...

Despite its importance and its widespread employment in policymaking practice, the theoretical and epistemic foundations of institutional mapping have not been elaborated and its legitimacy is yet to be fully granted by the academic community. This paper is a contribution to this overdue effort....

Presents an overview and analysis of theconceptual basis and the main policy-design principles of the European Union(EU) approach to entrepreneurship policy, which includes small and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs), innovation, and competitiveness.The first stages ofpolicydevelopment -...

Sub-Saharan Africa has received tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid over the last fifty years yet economic development has remained elusive. In many countries absolute poverty has increased and life expectancy has declined. Karol Boudreaux and Paul Aligica argue that the results of...

This paper compares and contrasts two schools of political economy: the Austrian School, prominent members of which include Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises; and the Bloomington School, which was founded by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It is argued that the two traditions share a good deal in...

The conventional approach to overfishing is for government to impose a top-down management system on the industry. This may involve a state agency setting overall catch quotas and then allocating shares to fishing enterprises, or creating some form of market framework that allows catch shares to...