Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T12:26:01.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2007

Oleg Smirnov
Oleg Smirnov
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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 ([email protected]). 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 489 - 501
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acheson, J. M. 1975. The lobster fiefs: Economic and ecological effects of territoriality in the Maine lobster industry. Human Ecology 3 (3): 183–207.Google Scholar
Alexander, R. D. 1987. The Biology of Moral Systems. Aldine de Gruyter: New York.
Alston, Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. 1999. Titles, Conflict, and Land Use. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Anderson, Terry. L. 1995. Sovereign Nations or Reservations? San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.
Anderson, Terry L., and Fred S. McChesney. 2003. Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Arbuckle, M., and M. Metzger. 2000. Food for Thought: A Brief History of the Future of Fisheries Management. Nelson, New Zealand: Challenger Scallop Enhancement Company Limited.
Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books.
Axelrod, Robert. 1986. An evolutionary approach to norms. American Political Science Review 80 (4): 1095–111.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Robert. 1997. The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Axelrod, R., and W.D. Hamilton. 1981. The evolution of cooperation. Science 211: 1390–96.Google Scholar
Berkes, F., D. Feeny, B.J. McCay, and J.M. Acheson. 1989. The benefits of the commons. Nature 340: 91–93.Google Scholar
Berkes, F., R. Mahon, P. McConney, R. Pollnac, and R. Pomeroy. 2001. Managing Small-scale Fisheries. Ottawa: International Development research Centre.
Binmore, Ken. 1992. Game Theory and Social Contract. Volume 2: Just Playing. Lexington: D.C. Heath.
Boyd, Robert, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter J. Richerson. 2003. The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100 (6): 3531–3535.Google Scholar
Boyd, R., and P.J. Richerson. 1992. Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizeable groups. Ethoogy and Socibiology 13: 171–95.Google Scholar
Brandt, Hannelore, Christoph Hauert, and Karl Sigmund. 2003. Punishment and reputation in spatial public goods games. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 270 (1519): 1099–104.Google Scholar
Bromley, D. W., ed. 1992. Making the Commons Work. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies.
Ciriacy-Wantrup, Siegfried V., and Richard C. Bishop. 1975. Common property as a concept in natural resource policy. Natural Resources Journal 15: 713–27.Google Scholar
Clutton-Brock, T. H., and G. A. Parker. 1995. Punishment in animal societies. Nature 373: 209–16.Google Scholar
Crean, Kevin, and David Symes, eds. 1996. Fisheries Management in Crisis. Oxford: Fishing News Books.
Dawes, Christopher, Tim Johnson, James Fowler, Richard McElreath, and Oleg Smirnov. 2007. Nature 446: 794–96.
Dyer, Christopher L., and James R. McGoodwin, eds. 1994. Folk Management in the World's Fisheries: Lessons for Modern Fisheries Management. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.
Ellickson, Robert C. 1991. Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Elster, Jon. 1989. The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fehr, Ernst, and Urs Fischbacher. 2004. Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior 25: 63–87.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gachter. 2002. Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature 415: 137–40.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst, and B. Rockenbach. 2003. Detrimental effects of sanctions on human altruism. Nature 422: 137–40.Google Scholar
Field, Alexander J. 2001. Altruistically Inclined? The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Flood, M.M. 1952. Some experimental games. Research memorandum RM-789. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
Fowler, James. 2005. Altruistic Punishment and the Origin of Cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109 (19): 7047–7049.Google Scholar
Fowler, James, Tim Johnson, and Oleg Smirnov. 2005. Egalitarian motive and altruistic punishment. Nature 433: doi:10.1038/nature03256 (06 January).Google Scholar
Frank, Steven A. 1995. Mutual policing and repression of competition in the evolution of cooperative groups. Nature 377: 520–522.Google Scholar
Frank, Steven A. 2003. Perspective: Repression of competition and the evolution of cooperation. Evolution 57 (4): 693–705.Google Scholar
Frohlich, Norman, and Joe A. Oppenheimer. 1995. The incompatibility of incentive compatible devices and ethical behavior: Some experimental results and insights. Public Choice Studies 25: 24–51.Google Scholar
Fudenberg, Drew, and Eric Maskin. 1986. The Folk Theorem in repeated games with discounting and incomplete information. Econometrica 54: 533–54.Google Scholar
Gardner, Andy, and Stuart A. West. 2004. Cooperation and punishment, especially in humans. American Naturalist 164 (6): 753–64.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd, and K. Hug. 1992. Domain specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition 43: 127–71.Google Scholar
Gintis, H. 2000. Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology 206: 169–79Google Scholar
Glick, T. F. 1970. Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hamilton, W. D. 1964. Genetical evolution of social behavior I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1–52.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1975. Innate social aptitudes of man: An approach from evolutionary genetics. In Biosocial Anthropology, ed. R. Fox. New York: Wiley.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–48.Google Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, and Robert Boyd. 2001. Why people punish defectors. Journal of Theoretical Biology 208: 79–89.Google Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. 2001. Cooperation, reciprocity and punishment in fifteen small-scale societies. American Economic Review 91: 73–8.Google Scholar
Hirshleifer, D., and E. Rasmusen. 1989. Cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma with ostracism. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 12: 87–106.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1947 [1651]. Leviathan. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.
Isaac, R. M., J. Walker, and S. Thomas. 1984. Divergent evidence on free riding: An experimental examination of possible explanations. Public Choice 43: 113–49.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. 1986. Reciprocity in international relations. International Organization 40 (1): 1–27.Google Scholar
Kibreab, G. 2002. State Intervention and the Environment in Sudan, 1889–1989. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
Kreps, David, and Robert Wilson. 1982. Reputation and imperfect information. Journal of Economic Theory 27: 253–79.Google Scholar
Kreps, David, Paul Milgrom, John Roberts, and Robert Wilson. 1982. Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated Prisoners' Dilemma. Journal of Economic Theory 27: 245–52.Google Scholar
Kurzban, R., K. McCabe, K. Smith, and B. Wilson. 2001. Incremental Commitment in a Real-time Public Goods Game. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27: 1662–73.Google Scholar
Leal, Donald R. 1996. Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons. PERC Policy Series 7. Bozeman, MT: PERC.
Ledyard, J. 1995. Public goods: A survey of experimental research. In The Handbook of Experimental Economics, ed. J.H. Kagel and A.E. Roth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lubell, Mark, and John T. Scholz. 2001. Cooperation, reciprocity, and the collective-action heuristic. American Journal of Political Science 45: 160–78.Google Scholar
Maas, Arthur, and Raymond L. Anderson. 1978. And the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth, and Justice in Arid Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mabry, J. B., ed. 1996. Canals and Communities. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Maynard Smith, John. 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McAdams, R.H. 1997. The origin, development, and regulation of norms. Michigan Law Review 96 (2): 338–433.Google Scholar
Meltzer, E. 1994. Global overview of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks: The nonsustainable nature of high seas fisheries. Ocean Development and International Law 25: 255–344.Google Scholar
Netting, R. McC. 1981. Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Norman, George, and Joel P. Trachtman. 2005. The Customary International Law Game. American Journal of International Law 99 (3): 541–80.Google Scholar
Nossal, Kim R. 1989. International sanctions as international punishment. International Organization 43: 301–32.Google Scholar
Nowak, M.A. 2006. Evolutionary Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Nowak, M.A., and K. Sigmund. 1998. Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature 393: 573–77.Google Scholar
Oliver, P. 1980. Rewards and punishments as selective incentives for collective action: theoretical investigations. American Journal of Sociology 85: 1365–75.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ophuls, W. 1973. Leviathan or oblivion. In Toward a Steady State Economy, ed. H. E. Daly. San Francisco: Freeman.
Orbell, John, Tomonori Morikawa, Jason Hartwig, James Hanley, and Nicholas Allen. 2004. Machiavellian intelligence, rationality, and the evolution of cooperative dispositions. American Political Science Review 98 (1): 1–15.Google Scholar
Orbell, J. M., A. van de Kragt, and R. Dawes. 1988. Explaining discussion-induced cooperation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 811–19.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1992. The rudiments of a theory of the origins, survival, and performance of common-property institutions. In Making the Commons Work, ed. D. W. Bromley. San Francisco: ICS Press.
Ostrom, Elinor, and Roy Gardner. 1993. Coping with asymmetries in the commons: Self-governing irrigation systems can work. Journal of Economic Perspectives 7: 93–112.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor, Roy Gardner, and James Walker. 1994. Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Plott, Charles R. 1983. Externalities and corrective policies in experimental markets. Economic Journal 93: 106–27.Google Scholar
Price, M.E., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. 2002. Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device. Evolution and Human Behavior 23: 203–31.Google Scholar
Reeve, H. K. 1992. Queen activation of lazy workers in colonies of the eusocial naked mole-rat. Nature 358: 147–49.Google Scholar
Reeve, H.K., and J. Gamboa. 1987. Queen regulation of worker foraging in paper wasps: a social feedback-control system (Polistes fuscatus, Hymenoptera, Vespidae). Behavior 102: 147–67.Google Scholar
Romer, David. 1984. The theory of social custom: A modification and some extensions. Quarterly Journal of Economics 99: 717–27.Google Scholar
Ruttan, L. 1998. Closing the commons: Cooperation for gain or restraint? Human Ecology 26: 43–66.Google Scholar
Sakurai, T., Y. Kijima, R. Pokharel, S. Rayamajhi, and K. Otsuka. 2001. Timber forest management in Nepal and Japan. In Land Tenure and Natural Resource Management: A Comparative Study of Agrarian Communities in Asia and Africa, ed. K. Otsuka and F. Place. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Samuelson, Larry. 1997. Evolutionary Games and Equilibrium Selection. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sethi, R., and E. Somanathan. 1996. The evolution of social norms in common property resource use. American Economic Review 86: 766–88.Google Scholar
Shavell, Steven. 1987. The optimal use of nonmonetary sanctions as a deterrent. American Economic Review 77: 584–92.Google Scholar
Smith, R. J. 1981. Resolving the tragedy of the commons by creating private property rights in wildlife. CATO Journal 1: 439–68.Google Scholar
Smith, Vernon. 2003. Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics. American Economic Review 93: 465–508.Google Scholar
Sober, E., and D.S. Wilson. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stevenson, Glenn G. 1991. Common Property Economics: A General Theory and Land Use Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tang, S. Y. 1992. Institutions and Collective Action. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies.
Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. 1992. The psychological foundations of culture. In The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, ed. Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trivers, Robert. 1971. The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35–57.Google Scholar
Turnbull, Colin Macmillan. 1961. The Forest People. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Umbeck, John R. 1981. A Theory of Property Rights: With Application to the California Gold Rush. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Vanberg, V.J., and R.D. Congleton. 1992. Rationality, morality and exit. American Political Science Review 86 (2): 418–31.Google Scholar
Veit, Peter G., Clement Dorm-Adzobu, and Okyeame Ampadu-Agyei. 1991. Community Institutions in Resource Management: Agroforestry by Mobisquads in Ghana. World Resources Institute.
Weber, M. 1958. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yamagishi, T. 1986. The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 110–16.Google Scholar