To sum up, we have seen how a brief overview of the field of Public Administration in
its disciplinary and historical evolution context gives us a better sense of its intrinsic
relationship with the Public Choice program as well as of the crucial position it has for any
attempt to move Public Choice from purely theoretical and academic research to practice.
It also offers a clearer insight of the inroads created by the Ostroms in this respect.
However the overview leaves us with a series of questions that are far from having a mere
historical relevance. Why didn’t the Ostroms’ Public Choice have more success in Public
Administration? Even if one may protest the use of the notion of failure, it is rather clear
that their success was not unqualified but more a matter of interpretation. What should
contemporary Public Choice scholars interested in the policy and its applied side learn to
avoid (or to do), from the Ostroms’ experience of relative failure or relative success? Is
there something consequential to learn from that? Those are important questions to ponder.