Defining public goods : an institutional approach to community-building and negotiating inter-community conflict / David J. O'Brien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brien, David J., 1941- author.

Contributor:

Edward Elgar Publishing, publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communities.

Public goods.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cheltenham, England ; Northampton, Massachusetts : Edward Elgar Publishing, [2021]

Summary:

"Through the lens of an economist's notion of public goods, David J. O'Brien analyzes the dual problems of declining communities and polarizing conflicts between metropolitan and rural communities. This macro-level Institutional approach requires a precise definition of the specific ways in which community-level challenges can negatively affect a larger voting public. The author describes in detail how seemingly intractable community-level problems and inter-community conflicts have been substantially reduced by framing them in terms of the self-interest of a larger polity. Examples include the Federalist papers, written in defense of the US Constitution, New Deal institutions created during the Great Depression, the post-World War II European Union, and more recent macro-level institutional changes that are assisting, in varying degrees, rural community sustainability in the US, Kenya, Rwanda and Russia. O'Brien's extensive community-level research experience in urban and rural communities that covers multiple historical periods, will appeal to inter-disciplinary social scientists, development specialists and persons looking for a hopeful, practical approach to solving the challenges of globalization"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Contents: Preface

Introduction: Globalization and the community challenge

1. Conceptualizing community within the public goods paradigm

2. Sources of resistance to defining community as a larger public goods problem

3. An institutional approach to building sustainable communities

4. Examples of top-down formal institutional adjustments on community sustainability and inter-community conflict

5. Location, informal institutions and social network effects on rural American community responses to globalization

6. Revisiting the quest for community

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-80088-543-1