Search results

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.

Max Weber's description of how status groups monopolise goods and opportunities is now widely used by sociological theory to understand the economic and political relationships between groups. However, it is rarely recognised that a problem of collective action must be solved if a status group is to operate in this way, that it is individually irrational for members of the group to support its monopolistic activities even if they profit from them. Once the collective action problem is recognised, it is immediately apparent that Weber's own account of the definitive features of a status group identifies precisely the means by which the problem is solved. Weber on the operation of status groups and Weber on their nature may then be fused into a single coherent and comprehensive account, an account of profound and far-reaching theoretical interest.

Individuals make decisions but they do not do so in a social vacuum. The goods they buy are frequently status-symbols in a zero-sum game which some will win and some must lose. Their consumption of commodities is subject to the constraint that what one can do, all cannot. The pressure of coalitions and interest groups, the self- interest of politicians and bureaucrats may all work against a solution being found for some of the most urgent social and economic problems of our times. These problems form the centrepiece of the economic approach to social interaction that has been pioneered by Anthony Downs, Mancur Olson and Fred Hirsch. This book seeks to examine and evaluate their important theories of collective action.

Conventional economic analysis does not explain satisfactorily the logic of collective action when the outcomes of such action possess public good characteristics. Here, a social custom model of collective action is developed that generalizes the analysis of collective action & allows for individual heterogeneity. The degree of heterogeneity among the population has important implications for the level of critical mass required before collective action can be sustained. The empirical content of the theoretical models is considered. 15 References. Adapted from the source document.