Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2025
Institutions of organization are designed to lower transaction costs. Transaction costs tend to be prohibitively high when large numbers of people would be required to engage in a transaction, so those transactions will not occur. Classic cases of externalities, such as when large numbers of people in an area suffer from air pollution from nearby industries, are good examples. Large numbers prevent those suffering from pollution from negotiating with those who are causing it. One way that market institutions deal with the problem of large numbers is to reduce those large number cases down to bilateral exchanges. With two parties engaged in transactions, transaction costs are lower, which facilitates mutually advantageous exchange. That works well for institutions of organization, but is difficult to apply to institutions of governance because one set of rules is designed for the entire population. Transaction costs are necessarily high, which means that only an elite few will be able to negotiate in the design of those institutions of authority and governance.
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