Vincent Ostrom’s role as a pivotal figure both as a participant in the initial Public
Choice conferences, when Public Choice hadn’t settled yet on an official name, and as its
key promoter of the theory’s use in Public Administration, has also been recognized and
reemphasized in a recent article published in Public Administration Review, the flagship
journal of the field, by Theo Toonen, a leading Public Administration scholar of the current
generation. Toonen is fond of reminding readers how in 1964, as an editor of Public
Administration Review, Vincent Ostrom urged from the very beginning scholars ‘‘keep in
touch with any newly emerging no-name fields that may represent important and exciting
developments for the advancement of public administration’’ (Ostrom 1964, pp. 62–63).
The Ostromian Public Choice episode is now solidly entrenched in the history of the
discipline.