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 advanced by Michael Polanyi and developed by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It continues introducing possible instances of polycentricity as well as related notions, as part of an attempt to further elaborate the concept through a concept design approach that systematically applies the logic of necessary and sufficient conditions. The article concludes by arguing that the polycentricity conceptual framework is not only a robust analytical structure for the study of complex social phenomena, but is also a challenging method of drawing non-ad hoc analogies between different types of self-organizing complex social systems.

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Revisiting the theory of institutional hybridity and diversity developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom to cope with the challenge of the “neither states nor markets” institutional domain, this article reconstructs the Ostromian system along the “value heterogeneity–co-production–polycentricity” axis. It articulates the elements of a theory of value heterogeneity and of the fuzzy boundaries between private and public. It rebuilds the model of co-production, clarifying the ambiguity surrounding a key technical public choice theoretical assumption, and it demonstrates (a) why it should not be confused with the Alchian-Demsetz team production model and (b) how co-production engenders a type of market failure that has been neglected so far. In light of this analysis, the article reconsiders polycentricity, the capstone of the Ostromian system, explaining why polycentricity may be seen as a solution both to this co-production market failure problem and to the problems of social choice in conditions of deep heterogeneity. It also discusses further normative corollaries.

Comparative economic systems literature deals extensively with 'systemic functions' and 'performance criteria' such as growth, efficiency and equity but rarely mentions the topic of resilience. This paper focusses on the issue of resilience while drawing several important lessons from the contributions in this respect of 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics co-recipient, Elinor Ostrom: The effects of alternative institutional arrangements and social norms as a source of both resilience and vulnerability; the problem of 'highly optimized tolerance' to specific sources of uncertainty; polycentricity as a possible structural solution to sustainability problems. A key point is that resilience is more than mere 'absorptive capacity' or 'speed of recovery': it depends on innovation and creative socio-cultural adaptations made possible by flexible and polycentric institutional processes. That has important implications for the ways we define and assess institutional performance and institutional design. Comparative Economic Studies (2014) 56, 52-76.

Summary This paper elaborates the notion of “crony capitalism” and advances an innovative approach to the analysis of the phenomenon in case, seen as a type of rent‐seeking society. The argument leads to a pioneering attempt to elaborate an original theory of crony capitalism as a sui generis system and with that end in view it combines three complementary perspectives: microeconomics (dealing with the basic economics of rent‐seeking), institutional or structural (dealing with the specific structures and configurations of institutions, policies and processes via which rent seeking gets materialized), and ideological (dealing with the ideas, rhetoric, beliefs, doctrines and other forms of legitimization and justification of the specific policies and institutions). The paper identifies significant functional differences between crony capitalism in high‐income and developing countries and advances a novel interpretation of the special nature of crony capitalism by focusing on the distinctive features of its ideological component.