Altruistic Punishment in Politics and Life Sciences: Climbing the Same Mountain in Theory and Practice

Abstract

As reflected in theory, laboratory evidence, and field studies, altruistic punishment of defectors promotes cooperation. Costly self-enforcement of socially optimal behavior has a number of independent links in political science, economics, psychology, sociology, computer science, and biology. This paper integrates the study of sanctions-based provision of public goods in the social sciences with the research on evolutionary adaptedness of altruistic punishment in the life sciences. Altruistic punishment appears to be (1) economically rational, (2) evolutionarily robust as an individual propensity and as a cultural norm, (3) normatively more appealing than tit-for-tat, which is a reciprocal punishment by defection, and (4) socially common. The theoretical and empirical importance of altruistic punishment has immediate policy implications. Examination of commons around the world suggests that privatization and centralized coercion are not the only solutions to the tragedy of the commons. A viable policy alternative is to facilitate the evolution of the commons as a common-property regime with its own norms and a certain degree of independence.Oleg Smirnov is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stony Brook University (Oleg.Smirnov@sunysb.edu). He would like to thank Terry Anderson, Daniel Benjamin, James Fowler, Tim Johnson, John Orbell, Tony Smith, Wally Thurman, and anonymous referees for helpful comments. This research was supported by the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), Bozeman, MT.