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The 1989 Eastern European revolutions produced systematic failures in which various social, economic, and political players to coordinate on mutually beneficial solutions. The old institutional grid--political, economic, and social--was destroyed and the new institutions were still in the making. The collective action problems born in this institutional vacuum contributed to political instability, economic under-performance, and social inefficiencies. This paper examines the cooperation and lack of cooperation among Polish political parties in the 1990s as examples of the failure to reach agreement among political actors.

Abstract: This paper examines the Northern Prawn Fishery of Australia as an illustration of the consistent failures of systems of open ("market"?) access to common property goods. The dilemmas of collective action explain both why those occurred and substantially why subsequent regulatory intervention has not succeeded either in its stated objectives. It is argued, unfashionably, that the endemic nature of these collective action dilemmas in the fishery means that in 1987 the regulatory schema proposed by the government (the allocative coercion option?) would have provided superior outcomes to allocations based on self‐regulation by the industry.

Budgetary agreements may be thought of as collective action problems in which the problem a hand is maintaining group cohesion by controlling free riders. The standard solution to the free rider problem includes monitoring group behavior and imposing sanctions. This article analyzes the collective action problem present in the budgetary provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the Economic Monetary Union, by focusing on the four stages of budgetary compliance that are evident in all budgetary agreements and treaties.

Dans cet article, nous démontrons l'utilité d'une approche microfondamentale dans la compréhension de phénomènes sociaux de plus grande ampleur. Grâce à l'analyse des questions de recours collectifs, qui se sont posées aux différents acteurs, au Canada et en Angleterre, nous établissons un lien informel entre la macrovariable de « structure de l'industrie » et les formes divergentes de réglementation corporatiste instaurées dans les années 1930. Après avoir expliqué les caracteéristiques centrales de l'approche microfondamentale et souligné les aspects importants de la théorie des jeux et du concept de choix rationnel, nous examinons les témoignages élaborés, présentés dans le cadre de commissions et de comités du gouvernement. Ces données comparatives et historiques fournissent les bases qui permettent de comprendre la manière dont les différentes structures de l'industrie ont causé des problèmes de réglementation uniques pour les gouvernements canadien et britannique.This paper argues for the utility of a microfoundational approach to understanding larger social phenomena. Through an analysis of the collective action problems experienced by the various actors in both Canada and England, I wish to establish a causal link between the macro‐level variable "industry structure" and the divergent forms of corporatist regulation instituted in the 1930s. After clarifying the central features of my microfoundational approach and highlighting important aspects of game theory and rational choice explanations, I review the extensive sets of testimonies given before governmental commissions and committees. These comparative and historical data provide the foundations for understanding how distinct industry structures produced unique sets of regulatory problems for the Canadian and British governments.

Studies of the EU accession of the East and Central European Countries have stressed the importance of neo-liberal institutionalism as an explanation for Member State preferences. In this paper it is argued that Member States' preferences over Turkish EU accession are better explained by power politics and neo-realism. It seems therefore that Turkey's way to the EU follows another path than the East and Central Countries. Turkish accession raises the question of the EU's role in a uni-polar world order - whether the EU should develop into an independent actor on the world stage or not. However, when it comes to the interaction among the Member States in order to decide on when to open accession negotiations with Turkey the constitutive values of the EU seriously modify the outcome that pure power politics would have let to. ; Els estudis sobre l'adhesió a la UE dels països de l'Europa Oriental i Central han destacat la importància del neo-institucionalisme liberal com una explicació de preferències dels Estats membres. En aquest treball s'argumenta que les preferències dels Estats membres sobre Turquia a la UE s'expliquen millor per la política del poder i el neo-realisme. Sembla, doncs, d'aquesta manera de Turquia a la UE segueix una ruta diferent dels Països de l'Est i Central. Adhesió de Turquia planteja la qüestió del paper de la UE en un ordre mundial unipolar - si la UE ha d'esdevenir un actor independent en l'escena mundial o no. No obstant això, quan es tracta de la interacció entre els Estats membres per decidir sobre el moment d'obrir les negociacions d'adhesió amb Turquia els valors constitutius de la UE seriosament modificar el resultat que pura política de poder hagués deixat fer-ho.

The problem of collective action is usually identified with social dilemmas. A wider notion of the term collective action problem is introduced, as dilemmas are not the only problems to arise in collective action. The article first presents a typology of collective action problems based on matrix game analysis. Five types are distinguished: distribution, defection, co-ordination, disagreement, and instability problems. Second, the article discusses a number of proposals how to resolve these types of collective action problems, such as altruism, norms, focal points, correlated strategies, collective decision-making, external power, and sanctioning. Whereas the political solutions can be used to resolve all types of problems, the motivational solutions can only facilitate the resolution of some of the problems, and the rational expectation solutions can solve some types and help to solve others.

We are interested in explaining why some groups of users of common property are able to resolve their collective action problems by themselves and others not. Our argument is that a group possesses the capacities for a wholly endogenous solution to the degree that it approximates a community of mutually vulnerable actors. For an initial test, we reanalyze the cases studied by Elinor Ostrom in her recent book, Governing the Commons (Ostrom, 1990), in which the central role of community is (we believe) obscured.

The study of collective action has matured dramatically since Mancur Olson challenged scholars by positing a general theory in his pathbreaking book on The Logic of Collective Action (1965). Olson's theoretical predictions related to the incapacity of individuals, except under limited conditions, to solve on their own what are now known as `collective action problems'. Olson argued that one characteristic of goods - that of exclusion - defined all public goods. In contemporary analysis, the problem of achieving exclusion of noncontributors has come instead to characterize all types of collective action problems. Multiple subtypes of collective action problems have been identified. One major class of collective action problems are referred to in contemporary literature as public goods. Another class are referred to as common-pool resources. Common-pool resources are characterized by difficulty of exclusion and subtractability of resource units and are threatened by overuse leading to congestion or even destruction of the resource. Such threats do not apply to public goods. Diverse production and allocation functions generate further important differences in behavior and outcomes. Scholars have also begun to recognize multiple types of property right bundles that distinguish among authorized entrants, users and claimants, proprietors and full owners. Empirical studies show that groups of individuals who possess at least the rights of proprietorship are able to govern and manage their systems more effectively than presumed in the earlier theoretical literature. The article ends with an analysis of the factors that may be conducive to the organization of a common-property regime as contrasted to a private-property regime.

This book examines how nations and other key participants in the global community address problems requiring collective action. The global community has achieved some successes, such as eradicating smallpox, but other efforts to coordinate nations' actions, such as the reduction of drug trafficking, have not been sufficient. This book identifies the factors that promote or inhibit successful collective action at the regional and global level for an ever-growing set of challenges stemming from augmented cross-border flows associated with globalization. Modern principles of collective action are identified and applied to a host of global challenges, including promoting global health, providing foreign assistance, controlling rogue nations, limiting transnational terrorism, and intervening in civil wars. Because many of these concerns involve strategic interactions where choices and consequences are dependent on one's own and others' actions, the book relies, in places, on elementary game theory that is fully introduced for the uninitiated reader

The article is an attempt to offer a 'bottom‐up' explanation of political instability in Latin America by examining patterns of class formation in the region. It argues that the heterogeneous class structure characterizing the popular sectors creates collective action problems that historically have resulted in popular sector mobilization by populist elites, if not apathy or civil war. The possibility of an alternative basis for popular sector mobilization that is more favorable to democratic consolidation is explored on the basis of a neo‐Marxist interpretation of class formation. By incorporating variables dealing with the state and the nature of civil society that are not directly related to the relationship of individuals or groups to the means of production, an effort is made to outline the basis of a new popular sector collective identity which offers a totalizing synthesis of this social heterogeneity. Some of the implications of this are briefly discussed in a concluding section.