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24 - Experimental Contributions to Collective Action Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Eric Coleman  and
Elinor Ostrom
Edited by
James N. Druckman ,
Donald P. Greene ,
James H. Kuklinski  and
Arthur Lupia
Eric Coleman
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Elinor Ostrom
Affiliation:
Indiana University
James N. Druckman
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Donald P. Greene
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
James H. Kuklinski
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Arthur Lupia
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

Collective action problems are difficult problems that pervade all forms of social organization from within the family to the organization of production activities within a firm and to the provision of public goods (PGs) and the management of common pool resources (CPRs) at local, regional, national, and global scales. Collective action problems occur when a group of individuals could achieve a common benefit if most contribute needed resources. Those who would benefit the most, however, are individuals who do not contribute to the provision of the joint benefit and free ride on the efforts of others. If all free ride, then no benefits are provided.

Political scientists trying to analyze collective action problems have been influenced by a narrow, short-term view of human rationality combining an all-powerful computational capacity, on the one hand, with no capability to adapt or acquire norms of trustworthiness and fair contributions to the provision of collective benefits, on the other. To provide PGs, it is believed that governments must devise policies that change incentives to coerce citizens to contribute to collective action.

Formal analysis of collective action problems has been strongly affected by the pathbreaking work of Olson (1965) on The Logic of Collective Action and the use of game theory (e.g., Hardin 1982; Taylor 1987), which improved the analytic approach to these problems.

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Information
Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science , pp. 339 - 352
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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