Above Politics: Credible Commitment and Efficiency in the Design of Public Agencies
Author(s)
Miller, Gary
Abstract
The state has two faces: one benign and one malevolent. The creation of the state facilitates the provision of public goods that would otherwise be absent. But the state also allows a degree of hierarchical exploitation that would be impossible in earlier forms of human society. Trying to design a set of governmental institutions that will encourage the benign aspects of the state while limiting its capacity for exploitation has been a persistent puzzle throughout history. In this article I will argue that our failure to find a perfect system is in not due to human frailty or ignorance, but to certain logical impossibilities in social organization.
