Understanding Government By Metaphors

This paper develops Government as a Supermarket from a concern with rigid relationships among jurisdiction, administrative institutions, and residents. Drawing on Tiebout's logic of choice and mobility and on the supermarket metaphor, it develops three dimensions: Choice, Displacement, and Encounter Point. Government-person relationships move from one-to-onetoward many-to-many, while detached jurisdictions, services, and points of contact are reconnected through administrative networks. The result is an administrative structure in which people and governments both search for and choose one anothe