Table: Historical & Operational Precedents of Private Governance

TitleAuthor(s)Pub DatePublisherDescriptionProblems
Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of ChoiceEdward P. Stringham (Ed.)2007Transaction PublishersAnthology of key texts on private governance, polycentric law, and anarcho-capitalist theory.Assembling the empirical and theoretical case that voluntary private institutions can replace state monopolies.
Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social LifeEdward Stringham2015Oxford University PressEmpirical study of how private governance institutions create and enforce rules without state involvement.Demonstrating that complex social and economic order can emerge and persist through purely voluntary private institutions.
The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the FrontierTerry L. Anderson & Peter J. Hill2004Stanford Economics and FinanceEconomic analysis showing how decentralized property rights were enforced on the American frontier without the state.Dismantling the false dilemma between lawlessness and an expansive state enforcement apparatus in newly settled territories.
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil SocietyDavid T. Beito, Peter Gordon, & Alexander Tabarrok (Eds.)2002University of Michigan PressHistorical volume documenting how private communities successfully engineered infrastructure and mutual aid without the state.Overcoming the myth that essential municipal goods inherently require a coercive tax monopoly.