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Collective Goods and International Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Bruce M. Russett  and
John D. Sullivan
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Extract

As they pursue their goals, actors—whether individuals, groups, or states—attempt to consume goods and services of various types. Generally they try to obtain such goods through private action. Thus, individuals clothe and entertain themselves by means of their individual actions in various marketplaces. Similarly, states will attempt to achieve goals and put policies into effect through their own actions. They will trade with other countries, develop defensive capabilities, and produce scientific knowledge substantially through their own efforts. States behave, then, as if they were private consumers in a market economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , fall 1971 , pp. 845 - 865
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1971

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References

1 The theory of collective goods has been developed in detail by economists. Its application to political problems stems from the work of Olson, Mancur Jr, in The Logic of Collective Action: Political Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and to international politics from Olson, Mancur Jr, and Zeckhauser, Richard in ’An Economic Theory of Alliances,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 08 1966 (Vol. 48, No. 3), pp. 266–279CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Economic Theories of International Politics, ed. Bruce M. Russett (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1968), chapter 2. The present authors have also made substantial use of the theory, notably Russett, Bruce M. in What Price Vigilance? The Burdens of National Defense (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, chapter 4; and Sullivan, John D., “Cooperation in International Politics: Quantitative Perspectives on Formal Alliances,” in Behavioral International Relations, ed. Haas, Michael (San Francisco, Calif: Chandler Publishing Co., forthcoming)Google Scholar.

2 A number of writers have emphasized the development of political mechanisms in the supply of public goods. See Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Samuelson, Paul A., “Aspects of Public Expenditure Theories,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 11 1958 (Vol. 40, No. 4), pp. 332–338CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Of course, they may be actively polluting the air, but that is another matter.

4 Samuelson, , Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 40, No. 4Google Scholar. See also Buchanan, James M., The Demand and Supply of Public Goods (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1968), chapter 4Google Scholar; and Kamien, Morton I. and Schwartz, Nancy L., “Revelation of Preference for a Public Good with Imperfect Exclusion,” Public Choice, Fall 1970 (Vol. 9), pp. 19–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Ruggie, John Gerard, “Strategies and Structures of International Organization” (Paper presented at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, 09 1970)Google Scholar.

6 Deutsch, Karl W. et al. , Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, chapter 1; and Russett, Bruce M., Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press, 1963), chapter 2Google Scholar.

7 Olson, p. 29.

8 Olson and Zeckhauser, in Russetc, Economic Theories; and Russett, What Price Vigilance? and references in that volume. More recently Robert Angell has compiled data on the ratio of national voluntary contributions to agencies of the UN system to the same states' assessments. See Angell, Robert, “A Study of National Willingness to Take World Responsibilities” (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1971)Google Scholar. (Mimeographed.) The numerator is composed of the contributions made by each state to the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA), the UN Special Fund, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations-Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) World Food Program during 1961–1968. The denominator is composed of assessments for the United Nations, FAO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Civil Aeronautics Organization (ICAO) for the same years. States with high voluntary-to-assessed ratios tend to be large states. The rank orders on the contribution scale correlate positively with an r2 of .10 with the rank orders for gross national product (GNP) in 1965. It may be contended that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its military allies should be excluded from this computation on the grounds that they have consistendy been a minority within the UN which gains disproportionately few benefits from it and hence have litde incentive to make voluntary contributions to UN activities. If this is done, the r2 for the ranks of the remaining states on the two indices rises to .21. There is also a small but statistically significant correlation (r2 = .12) between states' sizes and their contributions to the International Red Cross (IRC) as a percentage of GNP. We arc grateful to Angell for sending us his data.

8 This assumes, of course, that the membership is large enough to command the resources needed to provide the good and that the good is not importantly a collective good provided at no cost to non-members as well. A recent article points out that the apparent effect of size cannot be deduced merely from the principles of rationality and self-interest as has sometimes been assumed. The authors nevertheless

admit that with regard to the supply of many collective goods, the problems of coordination necessary to overcome the free-rider tendencies in the group could increase as the group gets larger. … We would expect that most of the relations between size and free-riders stem from changes in the costs of the goods and the costs of communication among the individuals who would receive the goods. [Frohlich, Norman and Oppenheimer, Joe A., “I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends,” World Politics, 10 1970 (Vol. 23, No. 1), p. 108, footnote 10.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 In their discussion of “coalition formation mechanisms” Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold identify a set of factors which include several of the strategies discussed above. In analyzing integration in the European Community they discuss functional spillover, side payment, actor socialization, and feedback as mechanisms actors can employ in forming coalitions. See their Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1970), chapter 4 and PP. 155–157Google Scholar. See also the special issue of International Organization that they edited, Autumn 1970 (Vol. 24, No. 4)Google Scholar; and Russett, Bruce M., “Transactions, Community, and International Political Integration,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 03 1971 (Vol. 9, No. 3), pp. 224–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See especially Bernstein, Robert, International Integration (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

12 Russett, Bruce M., International Regions and the International System: A Study in Political Ecology (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1967), chapter 2Google Scholar.

13 See de Rusett, Alan, Strengthening the Framework of Peace: A Study of Current Proposals for Amending, Developing, or Replacing Present International Institutions for the Maintenance of Peace (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950), p. 159Google Scholar. For reference to other representatives of this school see Russett, , International Regions, p. 12Google Scholar.

14 Deutsch et al. See also Etzioni, Amitai, Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965)Google Scholar. The desirability of having one member large enough to constitute a core area has been challenged by Haas, Ernst B. and Schmitter, Philippe C. in “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections about Unity in Latin America,” International Organization, Autumn 1964 (Vol. 18, No. 4), pp. 705–737CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nye, Joseph S., “Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement,” International Organization, Autumn 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 4), especially pp. 877–879CrossRefGoogle Scholar, shows that among sets of less developed countries economic integration is likely to be greater when the members are more or less of equal size. In fact, the proposition about a core area may apply least to common markets in which the mix of goods is relatively nearer the privateend of the public-private spectrum.

15 Deutsch et al. Sec also, inter alia, Russett, Community and Contention; and, most recently, by the same author, “Interdependence and Capabilities for European Cooperation,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 12 1970 (Vol. 9, No. 2), pp. 143–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 We would like to point out the many basic similarities between the problem identified by collective goods theory and that known in game theory as the prisoners' dilemma. It seems likely that a deliberate effort to bring these two literatures together, especially drawing on the experimental material on conditions favoring cooperative behavior in the prisoners' dilemma, would be very valuable.

17 The data is from The Overall Level and Structure of R & D Efforts in OECD Member Countries (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1967), pp. 9Google Scholar, 14. The correlation is substantially unaffected by various transformations of the GNP data such as log10 and use only of rank orders. Note that these are all advanced countries. The least developed states might not have the private technological resources necessary to exploit the available collective good. See our discussion above. We should also note that technical objections are sometimes raised to correlations such as this in which one variable (e.g., GNP) appears in the denominator of the other (e.g., research and development/GNP). It can be shown, however, that in all such instances cited in this article the effect is in no way to inflate the apparent relationship between the variables and that the procedure is both theoretically and methodologically appropriate.

18 See, for example, Galtung, Johan, “Two Approaches to Disarmament: The Legalist and the Structuralist,” Journal of Peace Research, 1967 (Vol. 5, No. 2), pp. 161–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raser, John, “Deterrence Research: Past Progress and Future Needs,” Journal of Peace Research, 1966 (Vol. 4, No. 4), pp. 297–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by the same author, “Learning and Affect in International Politics,” Journal of Peace Research, 1965 (Vol. 3, No. 3), pp. 216–226Google Scholar.

19 See Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 119ffGoogle Scholar.