A List
8/30/04

NEW PROFESSOR AT SLU WINS AWARD FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS

CANTON – Augustus (Gus) diZerega, who has just joined the St. Lawrence 
University faculty as a visiting assistant professor of government, has been 
awarded a $10,000 prize from the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at 
the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, for his research into "the spontaneous 
creation of democratic political orders."
	Atlas' Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order rewards and promotes the 
work of scholars that study the relevance of the spontaneous order to disciplines 
other than economics. Announcing the award, Atlas Senior Fellow Bill Dennis 
stated, "In essence, diZerega argues that democracy arises from a consensus among 
participants in a freely associating group, rather than being mandated by a 
central power.
      "Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's theory of spontaneous order greatly 
influenced diZerega's work. Hayek refuted the idea that, in the absence of 
planning, there is chaos. Instead, he noted that the free market was not planned 
by an individual mind, but resulted from interactions between individuals in a 
society. Other non-economic examples of spontaneous order include language and 
lines that cue up at a ticket window. diZerega believes that democratic orders 
arise in a similar manner. He explains 'that formal equality of status should 
apply between all adult human beings in a free society, and that the ideal 
relationships between equals are based on consent.' DiZerega writes further, 
'Science, the market, and liberal (representative) democracy are therefore all 
expressions of fundamental liberal values, and their strong association with 
liberal civilization is more than fortuitous.' With this understanding of 
the creation of democratic orders, DiZerega hopes to provide new insights 
into safeguarding and promoting ethics in the public sphere."
	An article by diZerega and related to this research, titled "Toward a 
Hayekian Theory of Commodification and Systemic Contradiction: Citizens, 
Consumers and the Media," appears in the Summer 2004 issue of The Review of 
Politics. 
      Prior to joining the faculty at St. Lawrence, diZerega was a visiting 
professor at Whitman College in Washington. He holds bachelor's and master's 
degrees from the University of Kansas at Lawrence and earned the Ph.D. from 
the University of California at Berkeley. diZerega's book Persuasion, Power 
and Polity: A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization, was published in 2000.
      He will teach courses in political theory at St. Lawrence.
      The Atlas Economic Research Foundation was founded in 1981; its stated 
mission is "To discover, develop and support intellectual entrepreneurs worldwide 
who have the potential to create independent public policy institutes and 
related programs, which advance our vision; and to provide ongoing support as 
such institutes and programs mature."

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