Logic Of Collective Action Research Articles

THE MANAGEMENT OF COMMON PROPERTY RESOURCES: Finding a Cooperative Solution

When will villagers come together to supply themselves with goods and services that they all need but could not provide for themselves individually? Can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources? Many writers on collective action and common property are pessimisric about the ability of people who face problems with common property resources to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves. Some writers favor privatization of 1:he commons as the only viable solution; others, the imposition of state regulation. This article shows, with reference 232 Research Observer 2, no. 2 (July 1987) to Mancur Olson's logic of collective action, that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak for the village-based use of common property resources. There can thus be no general presumption that collective action will fail in the management of common property resources, any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work. article suggests that the chances of success through collective action depend on the characteristics of the resources, the user group, and group-state relations. This article is based on a forthcoming book, Village Republics: Conditions Notes for Collective Action in South India, Cambridge University Press. I am grateful to Hans Binswanger, Richard Kimber, Ford Runge, and especially Elinor Ostrom for discussions on various points of the argument. 1. For references, see citations later in text. 2. It is not that Olson says or implies that the size of the collective net benefit is irrelevant; he simply does not give it much attention. 3. For example, McKean (1984) on Japan; Gilles and Jamtgaard (1981) on Peru; Campbell and Godoy (1985) on the Andes; Hitchcock (1980), Peters (1983), and Thomsen (1980) on Africa; and Netting (1978) on Switzerland. See also Runge (1987) and Ostrom (1985b). 4. This argument is in line with some of the early writings in public choice theory, notably Buchanan and Tullock (1962) and Ostrom (1968). Later work in the public choice tradition has tended to focus too much on the issue of financial contributions. I have not discussed here the issue of group size. Olson's celebrated theorem, stated without qualification early in his book, is later restricted to large groups in a taxonomy of small, intermediate, and large. He says little about how to distinguish the three types of groups in practice, but he might argue that the groups under discussion here are intermediate groups and therefore outside the scope of his argument. 5. See also Ostrom (1985b), the starting point of my own formulation. Ault, W. 1973. Open-field Farming in Medieval England: A Study of Village By-laws. References London: Allen and Unwin. Blomquist, W., and E. Ostrom. 1985. Institutional Capacity and the Resolution of a Commons Dilemma. Policy Studies Review 5, no. 2: 383-93. Buchanan, J., and G. Tullock. 1962. Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Campbell, Bruce, and R. Godoy. 1985. Common-field Agriculture: Andes and Medieval England Compared. Queens University of Belfast, Geography Department. Carruthers, I., and R. Stoner. 1981. Aspects and Policy Issues in Groundwater Development. World Bank Staff Working Paper 496. Washington, D.C. Demsetz, H. 1967. Toward a Theory of Property Rights. American Review 57: 347-59. Dore, R. 1971. Modern Cooperatives in Traditional Communities. In P. Worsley, ed. Two Blades of Grass. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gilles, J. L., and K. Jamtgaard. 1981. Overgrazing in Pastoral Areas: Commons Reconsidered. Sociologia Ruralis 21: 129-41. Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162 (December): 1343-48. Hitchcock, R. K. 1980. Tradition, Social Justice, and Land Reform in Central Botswana. Journal of African Law 24: 1-34. Johnson, 0. 1972. Economic Analysis, the Legal Framework and Land Tenure Systems. Journal of Law and Economics 15: 259-76.

Some Recent Work in Public Choice

The standing of the public choice approach to politics is ambiguous. Most people now accept that there is something in it, even if the ‘something’ is restricted to Arrow'sSocial Choice and Individual Values, Downs'sAn Economic Theory of Democracy, Olson'sThe Logic of Collective Action, and (perhaps) Riker'sThe Theory of Political Coalitions. The Logic, for instance, is a cult abbreviation propagated by Olson himself but accepted by others. Three new adjectives (Downsian, Arrovian and Olsonian) are now established, although I have not yet found ‘Rikerian’. By analogy (Keynesian,The General Theory), the language seems to denote acceptance. But the seminal works (they are always seminal, as dawn in the Odyssey is always rosy-fingered) came out between 1951 and 1965; so where are their successors? Why have they had relatively little impact on student texts and informed public opinion? In short, what has been going on?A very great deal, in fact. The first generation proposed bold hypotheses; their successors have put enormous efforts into refining them and proposing new ones, and (unfortunately) rather limited efforts into testing them. There have been four main lines of development. It would be impossible to review all four critically in a single article; therefore I make only fairly brief comments on the first three and devote most of this article to the fourth, which I think is one of the most promising and of the greatest interest to political scientists.

The politics of the accord does corporatism explain it?

Abstract The period between the holding of the National Economic Summit Conference in April 1983 and the 1984 election has seen the politics of the Accord shift from a primary concern with wage setting through the Arbitration Commission to the management of trade‐offs in non‐wage areas between business, government and the ACTU. The politics of the Accord in this period is not understood by adopting an interest group approach to business, the ACTU and the government or by accepting EPAC's view of its own institutional role. Rather, business and the ACTU obey two different logics of collective action and Epac is a ‘disorganising’ institution. It is a representation system based on closure by exclusion called partial corporatism. Partial corporatism benefits business disproportionately and excludes women, welfare recipients and the unemployed.

Reviews

Reviews of Wage-fixing (Stagflation Volume 1), Is Knowledge Power?, Trade Unions: The Logic of Collective Action, Strikes in Australia: A Sociological Analysis of Industrial Conflict, No Free Lunch

OPEC and the Problem of Collective Action

The article considers the success of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in con trolling the price of crude oil as a possible example that the destructive logic of collective action may be circumvented. It is argued that the OPEC countries have succeeded in the pursuit of their collective cause due to the ability and willingness of Saudi Arabia to make good the damage perpetrated by free-rider conduct. Yet, the recent (March 1982 — March 1983) conflict over pricing- and production policy was a war of nerves, from which an accord emerged only after a painful game of threats and brinkmanship.

Book Reviews : TRADE UNIONS: THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION, by Colin Crouch. London, Fontana, 1982. 251 pp. $6.95 (paper). Published in the Fontana New Sociology Series, General Editor Gavin Mackenzie

Book Reviews : TRADE UNIONS: THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION, by Colin Crouch. London, Fontana, 1982. 251 pp. $6.95 (paper). Published in the Fontana New Sociology Series, General Editor Gavin Mackenzie

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Trade Unions: The Logic of Collective Action by Colin CrouchWorkers' Cooperatives: Jobs and Dreams, by Jenny ThornleyUnder New Management, by Tony EcclesThe Railwaymen. The History of the National Union of Railwaymen, Vol. 2, The Beeching Era and After, by Philip S. BagwellThe Social Organization of Industrial Conflict, Control and Resistance in the Workplace, by P.K. Edwards and Hugh ScullionThe Entrepreneurial Middle Class, by Richard Scase and Robert GoffeePay Inequalities in the European Communities, by Christopher Saunders and David MarsdenEqual Employment Issues: Race and Sex Discrimination in the U.S., Canada and Britain, by Harish Jain and Peter SloaneIncomes Policy, R.E.J. Chater, A. Dean and R.F. Elliott (eds)Work and Retirement, by Stanley Parker. Allen and UnwinTrade Unions, The Labour Party and the Law, by K.D. Ewing

On the Rise and Decline of Nations

This is an important addition to the literature of that growing field along the boundaries of economics, political science, sociology, and economic history. Mancur Olson, Jr. has extended the profound insight of his The Logic of Collective Action (1965) and used it to explain rapid national economic growth and subsequent decline. Growth, he argues, is impossible in a society riddled with vested interests, which frequently take the form of what he calls 'distributional coalitions' (sometimes called 'rent-seekers'), that spend their energy more on income distribution than on production. Thus, the Industrial Revolution in England occurred initially in the north and northwest, outside those areas dominated by guilds; and the economic miracle of German growth after World War II was made possible by that war's (and Naziism's) effect in dissolving the tangle of vested interests. Sustained economic growth with stable boundaries and political institutions is likely to slow down a society's capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions. Encrusted with collective organizations which get in each other's way-monopolies, conglomerates, cartels, pressure groups, lobbies, unions, trade associations and the like-economies become arteriosclerotic and arthritic. (Olsen says they become, 'rheumatic', but as a younger man than I he is inadequately acquainted with geriatrics to know of such matters.) Distributional coalitions have crowded agendas, difficulty in reaching effective decisions in timely fashion; they increase the complexity of regulation, require enlargement of the role of government and add to the difficulty of achieving social understanding. Traumatic shock may be required to escape their clutches. This is big-picture political economy and economic-cum-social history, of the order of the interpretations of Marx on class struggle, North and Thomas on property rights, Shonfield on economic planning, Rostow on take-off, Friedman and-on a somewhat different level-Vilar on the centrality of money (Vilar, 1976). Olson is careful to say that his theory is not monocausal. He pauses frequently in particular situations to say that one must allow for an admixture of many causal elements. He somewhat dilutes the modesty of these admissions, however, by recurring, time and again, to the need for a theory to be parsimonious, stripped to basics and to the smallest number of elements that will serve to explain outcomes. He clearly believes that his 'theory' is robust and rich enough to delineate the outline of economic history. Olson's ideas are advanced as a 'theory' of economic history, well short of a theorem, but more encompassing than a law, model or effect. Theorems may be limited to a small portion of the area to be explained, but within it have universality and susceptivity to refutation by counterexample. Laws also typically deal with limited aspects of economics and are general statements of tendencies, as in Engel's

The Japanese Experience With Scarcity: Management of Traditional Common Lands

One of the first things we all learn in studying environmental problems is that environmental quality is a or collective good and, conversely, that environmental degradation is a or collective bad. For this reason, action by isolated individuals, however well-intentioned, cannot yield overall improvements in environmental quality and cannot prevent environmental degradation. This public goods or problem has been eloquently described in Garrett Hardin's famous essay, Tragedy of the Conunons, and carefully analyzed in Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action.1 In essence, rational individuals acting in their own interest in the absence of any mechanism for cooperation will gradually but inexorably withhold their contributions to the maintenance of, or use up more than their fair share of, commonly held assets, eventually threatening the very existence of those collective goods. Some sort of collective decision to cooperate and exercise restraint (what Hardin calls mutual coercion mutually agreed upon) is obviously necessary. Thus environmental problems are by their very nature political. The challenge for society is to figure out how to eliminate circumstances in which rational individuals will make decisions that lead inexorably to tragedies of the commons, essentially to create greater overlap and syncrony between private good and good. To date, economists have paid the most careful attention to free-rider problems, analyzed their characteristics, and even devised some potential theoretical solutions.2

A New Model of Rational Choice

Classical economic theory always assumes that the individual will "act in his interest"; but it has never examined carefully the entity to which "his" refers. Often, as when households are taken as the unit for income and consumption, it is implicitly assumed that "the family" or "the household" is this entity whose interest is being maximized. Yet this is without theoretical foundation, merely a convenient but slipshod device. In this case, as in many others (e.g., when a man is willing to contribute much, even his life, to national defense, rather than use a strategy which will push the cost onto others), men act as if the "his" referred to some entity larger than themselves. That is, they appear to act in terms, not of their own interest, but of the interests of a collectivity or even of another person. Indeed, if they did not do so, the basis for society could hardly exist. Yet how can this be reconciled with the narrow premise of individual interest? . . . We could simply solve the problem by fiat, letting "his" refer to whatever entity the individual appeared to act in the interest of. This obviously would make the theory trivially true, and never disconfirmable. A more adequate solution is one which states the conditions under which the entity in whose interests he acts will be something other than himself.'

Monopolies, market interdependencies and the logic of collective action: some critical comments on Mancur Olson's group theory

Monopolies, market interdependencies and the logic of collective action: some critical comments on Mancur Olson's group theory

A collective goods model of pluralist political systems

In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson strongly criticized the work of the analytical pluralists, particularly with regard to the fairness of the outcomes in a pluralist political system.' The foundation of his criticism is his assertion, based on a Cournot model of group behavior, that large groups are unable to compete in the political marketplace.2 If this is the case, and if, to use Bentley's phrase, 'the balance of group pressures is the existing state of society,' then one can expect this balance to be badly skewed in favor of small, special interests and against large, general interests. Recent analyses using the same model have shown that Olson's assertion concerning the behavior of large groups is not in general true, and that contrary to his assertion, the relationship between group size and the amount of a public good provided is an increasing one.3 In light of these results, it seems appropriate to re-examine in detail the properties of a model of a pluralist political system based on the theory of collective goods. This paper contains such an analysis of pluralist political systems, and assesses the asymmetries in outcomes which arise from a variety of sources. Among the sources of asymmetry are variation in group size, wealth, influence, intensity of preferences, and the degree of organized pursuit of group goals. The discussion below suggests that variation in system parameters greatly affects the properties of outcomes and that it is necessary to specify more carefully than is usually done the characteristics of a particular pluralist system before assessing the fairness of its outcomes.

Closing a Government Facility

43. In his study of the closing of Plant, Alfred Slote describes how Allen, the Vice-President of Pennsylvania Corporation, had been responsible for the closing of two smaller plants before Baker. Allen picked Frank to close Baker Plant because, was a good businessman. ... The closed plant kept up production to the end. Alfred Slote, Termination: The Closing of Baker Plant (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969) pp. 23, 27. In the formulation being employed in this paper, Allen would be a ''revitalizing entrepreneur, and Robertson the receiver in bankruptcy. Presumably Robertson expected that his success in smoothly closing Baker Plant would lead to further corporate rewards, although he could certainly not have expected much support from the Baker Plant constituencies directly. 44. David Stanley and Marjorie Girth, Bankruptcy: Problem, Process, Reform (Washington: Brookings, 1971) p. 121. 45. This distinction is based on the arguments of Mancur Olson, Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).

The logic of collective action: Some experimental results

The results of an experiment to test hypotheses derived from Olson's theory of collective action at the group level are reported. Strong evidence in favor of the theory is found with respect to the effects of group size on the amount of the collective good provided and on the degree of suboptimality associated with noncooperative provision of the good. For reasons discussed in the paper, the experimental results do not support the exploitation hypothesis.

Rational Choice and Social Exchange: A Critique of Exchange Theory.

Preface 1. Introduction Part I: 2. The pure theory of rational choice 3. Exchange and power in social life 4. The logic of collective action 5. The social psychology of exchange 7. Emergent processed Part II: 8. Rational choice revisited 9. Rational choice theory applied 10. Exchange and power again 11. The theory of price 12. Problems in the theory of groups 13. Rights, deserts and need 14. Gifts, favours and donations 15. Social norms - final and efficient causes 16. Conclusions Bibliography Index.

A diagrammatic exposition of the logic of collection action

During the decade since the appearance of Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action, a number of economists and political scientists have focused their efforts on further developing the model of group behavior analyzed by Olson.2 While these efforts have contributed to both the precision and the generality of the theory of collective action, the theory remains a somewhat loosely connected set of verbal and graphical assertions about group behavior, and the central results of the theory have not all been demonstrated using the same analytical style. This paper attempts to remedy this deficiency in some major respects.3 The analysis is made particularly easy to follow because of a result discussed in the Appendix which enables the analysis of both Cournot and Pareto optimal behavior using the same graph. It is hoped that this method of presentation will contribute to a consolidation of the theory of collective action and will also make the theory more easily accessible to the average reader.

A Note on the Inapplicability of Olson's Logic of Collective Action to the State

Mancur Olson, Jr., has developed a theory of collective action to account for the ability of economic groups to provide collective goods for their members. ' This note will contest the applicability of Olson's theory to the state on the ground that the state does not properly fit into the class of groups whose behavior the theory is intended to explain. In liberal political theory, the state is likely to be depicted as a utilitarian association in which the citizens are bound together and their actions concerted through their mutual self-interest in the receipt of personal benefits On this view, the value of the state to the citizen and his commitment to it depend on its ability to provide him with things he wants. Some of the things he wants are private goods to be enjoyed by himself alone or by himself and a determinate number of others. Other things he wants, however, are public or collective goods, which, if they are available to be enjoyed by him, must also be available to be enjoyed by all the other members of the state. It might seem that the ability of the state to produce collective goods in which all its members will share can be accounted for by their individual self-interest, because each individual member, perceiving that he will benefit as a result, will contribute to their production. Olson, however, has demonstrated that this explanation cannot work, because the rational course for the self-interested individual member is to attempt to ride free rather than cooperate in the production of a collective good which, if it is produced, will benefit him whether he contributes to producing it or not. One might suppose that if the interest of the members in having the collective goods cannot account for the fact that the state is able to produce them, one ought to look to something other than self-interest for an explanation. Olson's logic of collective action, however, depends upon the premise that participatory action is selfinterested action. He argues, therefore, that the state is able to elicit participation in

Provision of Collective Goods As a Function of Group Size

In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson shows how the activities of various political organizations can be fruitfully analyzed using the theory of collective goods. Several of Olson's major conclusions concern the relationship between the size of a group and its ability to provide its members with collective benefits. He concludes that as group size increases, the amount of collective benefits provided will become increasingly suboptimal, and that the absolute amount of collective benefits provided will decrease. This paper shows that Olson's conclusion concerning the relationship between group size and the absolute amount of collective benefits provided is not generally true. Within the framework of analysis used by Olson, it is demonstrated that the relationship is determined by the interaction between two effects, an “income” effect which may cause the level of benefits provided to increase as group size increases, and a “congestion” effect which may cause the level of benefits to decrease as group size increases. The final result is that for “inclusive” collective goods the relationship is an increasing one, while for “exclusive” goods it is a decreasing one. Some implications of this result for the use of the theory of collective goods in studying political processes are discussed.

Provision of Collective Goods As a Function of Group Size

In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson shows how the activities of various political organizations can be fruitfully analyzed using the theory of collective goods. Several of Olson's major conclusions concern the relationship between the size of a group and its ability to provide its members with collective benefits. He concludes that as group size increases, the amount of collective benefits provided will become increasingly suboptimal, and that the absolute amount of collective benefits provided will decrease. This paper shows that Olson's conclusion concerning the relationship between group size and the absolute amount of collective benefits provided is not generally true. Within the framework of analysis used by Olson, it is demonstrated that the relationship is determined by the interaction between two effects, an “income” effect which may cause the level of benefits provided to increase as group size increases, and a “congestion” effect which may cause the level of benefits to decrease as group size increases. The final result is that for “inclusive” collective goods the relationship is an increasing one, while for “exclusive” goods it is a decreasing one. Some implications of this result for the use of the theory of collective goods in studying political processes are discussed.

Political revolution and repression: An economic approach

In his "The Logic of Collective Action" Olson [21] develops the broad outlines of what might be called a private interest theory of public action. It is pointed out that since the benefit to an individual from the consumption of an extra unit of a collective (or public) good is small relative to his cost of producing it, "selective incentives" are required to explain participation in production. A "selective incentive" is a non-collective benefit contingent upon the individual's participation in the production of a collective good. More recently, Tullock [31] has imaginatively formalized and applied this type of economic theory to the question of the sources of revolutionary activity. Here Tullock's analysis is used as a point of departure in grouping historical political revolutions into meaningful types and in considering who is most likely to become a revolutionary. First, however, I offer a working definition of revolution and briefly review Tullock's formal model.