There’s been a recent uptick in academic work on anarchy, according to my completely non-scientific sampling of blogs and other websites. Here are some of my findings.
Reason hepped me to this recent paper by my friends Ben Powell and Ed Stringham. It’s called Public Choice and the Economic Analysis of Anarchy: A Survey. Here’s a sample:
Today the discussion of and research on anarchy continues with economists using modern theory and experimental laboratories to explore the equilibrium or equilibria that might arise under anarchy. This research is important for those who seek to describe the world as it actually is (with government enforcement so lacking), and the research may have important normative implications as well. If the state is unlikely to solve a problem that private parties can actually solve, then putting faith in government law enforcement is unwarranted.
Continuing with the pirate theme, unintentionally begun in last weekend’s WA, another friend, Pete Leeson, has written a book on the spontaneous legal orders that emerged among pirates in the absence of formal government and law. It’s called the Invisible Hook, natch, and will be released this May. Pre-order from Amazon here. You’ll notice that the book’s cover resembles a plank, which is a nice touch. If you can’t wait ’til May, you can dig into Pete’s original research on pirates and their self-developed forms of governance in these papers: An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization (.pdf), The Invisible Hook: The Law and Economics of Pirate Tolerance (.pdf) and The calculus of piratical consent: The myth of the myth of social contract (.pdf).
These call to mind other, slightly less recent:), academic papers on sweet, sweet anarchy:
Peter Boettke: Anarchism as a progressive research program in political economy (.pdf)
David Friedman: Anarchy and Efficient Law
John Hasnas: The Obviousness of Anarchy (.pdf)
Feel free to use the comments to highlight recent papers I may have missed or discuss any paper or article that influenced your thinking on anarchy or other spontaneous orders.
