Paul Dragos Aligica is a Senior Research Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Virginia, where he teaches in the Economics Department. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was a student of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. He has published extensively on institutional and governance theory, being the author of six books and numerous academic articles, exploring both the foundational and the applied side of alternative governance systems.