." Presented at the meeting of the Western Social Science Association, Tempe, AZ, April 30, 1976.
Not an abstract — but rather the "story" behind this paper:
So, why post a paper written nearly forty years ago? This is a lost paper "found" among someone's collection of old papers at Indiana University, and now part of IU's Digital Library of the Commons (http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/) -- a library associated with Elinor Ostrom's "workshop" at IU. I recently received a request to "digitize" the paper, and quite frankly I had no memory of the paper or having ever been to Tempe where it was delivered in April, 1976 (I guess that is proof I am getting old, as if I needed such).
From 1974 to 1976 I taught at Emporia Kansas State College (now Emporia State University) -- an interesting place to start one's academic career, filled with wonderful colleagues, although a bit too isolated after having lived in Boulder for six very stimulating years. One of the benefits of being at such a place at the time was the existence of an NSF "Chautauqua" Short Course program that took pity on those of us out in the smaller, more rural parts of the US and brought us to locations where we would take courses from people like Elinor Ostrom of IU (her course was on policy analysis) and Moshe Rubinstein of UCLA (an engineer whose course was on problem solving). Both were wonderful experiences, and I was particularly inspired by Lin Ostrom's course which then featured her work on metropolitan government. Between the two of them I not only got the theory-building/theory-testing "bug", but also found myself itching to actually write on policy analysis and seek another academic venue where publishing and research was rewarded (in September 1976 we packed up for Chicago where I taught at Loyola for four years....)
Although Ostrom's course was on metropolitan reform, my project was on health care reform (timely even then), but my interest began to focus on regulatory policy studies. Obviously, this paper was the first "public" presentation of my thoughts on both policy studies and regulatory policy -- and as I read it for the first time in 34 years, I was actually pretty pleased with the analysis and critical approach reflected in the paper.
But there are other things about the paper to point out. First, this is actually typed(!), probably on an IBM selectric or some other monstrosity. And obviously this is a Xerox copy, but might also be a "mimeograph" copy (look that one up!). To have it now digitized is really kind of a thrill -- as is the fact that someone at the Ostrom Workshop thought it worthy of preserving and posting after all these years. (Having always regarded Lin as a mentor of sorts, I probably sent her a copy so this might be from her papers which, I assume, are now being gathered....)
Of equal interest to me is the typewriter font itself -- for in recent years I have trying to liven up my powerpoint presentations by emulating the (Larry) Lessig approach, and his font of choice was a version of "typewriter" very close to what I used in this paper. If only I had known, I would have kept that machine....:-)
That is the end of my pleasant story about this paper.
