'We are offered the best one-volume analysis of public entrepreneurship, citizenship and self-governance. Drawing on a lifetime of study and reflection on different continents, Paul Dragos Aligica shows how much we gain in governance theory by drawing on the citizen-centered approach that Vincent and Elinor Ostrom developed and practiced over the years. At a time when new forms of tutelage, nativism and paternalism are gained grounds in the world, Aligica draws on the Ostroms to renew and reformulate, in an inspiring way, self-governance as a vision and as a theory that can help to stem the tide of anarchy, statism and despair about the prospect of democracy and the human condition itself. Social science at its best.' Filippo Sabetti, McGill University, Montreal