Memories of Mancur: a student reminisces

Abstract

Mancur was a happy and inquisitive person who had insights about big pictures that technicalities could never derail. The Logic of Collective Action and The Rise and Decline of Nations were certainly like that. They made bold claims that motivated researchers to go further. For example, The Logic of Collective Action provided new insights into the free-rider problem and a number of eye-catching hypotheses about group behavior that researchers tried to confirm, refute, or refine for decades, including claims about the relationship between group size and group success, the exploitation of larger actors by smaller ones, and the importance of selective incentives in group formation. The Rise and Decline of Nations argued that interest groups will eventually find rent seeking profitable, which will squeeze an economy through institutional sclerosis. Comparative political scientists and economists have since discovered cases supporting his claim, as well as cases better explained by alternative hypotheses. Both books were so well written that I still read them again and again just to think about how I might organize my own thoughts or write a good conclusion. Olson’s application of economic methodology to subjects that were traditionally in the realm of political science helped break political science out of its mid-twentieth-century rut, which spent too much time on the history of ideas and often assumed individuals would work towards their collective interests. By applying economic methodology to politics, political scientists could create valid assertions of their own and more cleanly apply them to cases that could be tested. In this way, Mancur became part of a movement that helped the social sciences proceed more scientifically. I have three memories of Mancur that stand above the rest. The first was his incredible ability to think on his feet. One year, in the mid-1990s, the Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics invited Amartya Sen to speak on campus. For