Robin Hanson wrote recently about his Status Circles. They start on an enormous scale with the whole universe and then life on Earth. But when most people focus on nation, acquaintances, and family, Robin distinguished his affiliations to people interested in the big questions—the intellectuals. But even within this grouping, he offers a wide range of ever-narrowing groupings.

Government structures are often thought of as falling into one another. The town is part of a county, which is part of a state, which falls under a country’s national laws and jurisdictions. Let’s call this the Russian Doll effect. By encapsulating one organization into the other, it seems a default that the interests of the smallest doll would be taken in consideration up the chain.

In Vincent Ostrom’s book The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, the author uses ideas offered by de Tocqueville to suggest otherwise.

I’m reading Vincent Ostroms The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration. On page 80, he refers to De Tocqueville’s impressions of the US administration. Can it be said that the French man thought there was independence between various levels of US governance, and that’s a good thing?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, Alexis de Tocqueville generally viewed the decentralization of governance in the United States as a positive feature. In Democracy in America, he admired how local institutions, especially townships and states, maintained a degree of independence from the central government. Tocqueville saw this decentralization as essential to fostering civic engagement, political responsibility, and democratic stability. He believed that allowing different levels of government to function with relative autonomy helped prevent tyranny and encouraged active participation by citizens in public affairs.

Vincent Ostrom, in The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, often draws from Tocqueville to critique centralized bureaucratic models. Ostrom emphasizes how polycentric governance—where multiple centers of authority operate independently but cooperatively—aligns with Tocqueville’s observations about America’s administrative structure. So yes, Tocqueville did see this independence as beneficial, particularly in reinforcing democratic habits and limiting the overreach of centralized power.

4o

You said:

If one were to take the imagery one step further, could one separate each level out by encapsulating them in a self-interest cloak- the idea being that in terms of action, each level will prioritize the interest at the local level, which can be at odds with other levels of governance.

ChatGPT said:

Yes, you could extend the imagery in that way. If each level of governance is wrapped in a “self-interest cloak,” it suggests that local, state, and federal authorities will act primarily to protect their own interests, which may sometimes conflict with other levels. This aligns with public choice theory, which Ostrom himself engages with, emphasizing that political actors—whether at the local, state, or national level—pursue their own interests rather than some idealized collective good.

Tocqueville observed that the strength of American governance lay in its decentralized structure, where local institutions had enough autonomy to make decisions that best served their immediate communities. However, this same independence could lead to friction when different levels of government pursue conflicting agendas. For example, a state might resist federal mandates that it views as intrusive, or a local government might implement policies that are at odds with state priorities.

This “self-interest cloak” metaphor also ties into the broader tension in American federalism: the push and pull between cooperation and competition among different levels of government. In practice, while decentralization fosters adaptability and local problem-solving, it can also create inefficiencies, redundancy, and legal battles when interests clash. Ostrom, like Tocqueville, would likely argue that this tension isn’t necessarily a flaw but an inherent feature of a system designed to resist centralized authority and encourage pluralism.

The benefit of this model, as opposed to the Russian Doll model, is understanding when a group becomes a competitor rather than an altruistic companion. For instance, during the COVID crisis, all the states bid up the price of masks by bidding against each other. In their actions, which were independent (cloaked in self-interest), Americans increased the costs of masks for all Americans to the benefit of those abroad. When reorganized as a bidding unit at the national level, this price effect is reduced.

The only trick, of course, is that you must trust that the greater group will, in turn, divide out the masks to everyone’s satisfaction.