Institutional Collective Action and Economic Development Joint Ventures

There is high interest in economic development efforts involving cooperation or collaboration among metropolitan jurisdictions. To determine why some local governments engage in cooperative agreements while others do not, this paper investigates transaction obstacles, including bargaining, information, agency, enforcement, and division problems. The authors then advance an institutional collective action explanation for intergovernmental cooperation, focusing on the conditions under which these transactions costs are low. This work anticipates that the costs associated with interlocal cooperation are influenced by the demographic characteristics of communities, local political institutions, and the nature of regional government networks. Empirical analysis based on a national survey of local development officials provides support for several predictions from this model and identifies policy variables that, in turn, increase the prospects for cooperation, specifically through the development of informal policy networks.     

Regional Governance and Institutional Collective Action for Environmental Sustainability

This research investigates why various mechanisms of cooperation among local authorities are chosen using the theoretical lens of institutional collective action (ICA). The article analyzes 564 local collaboration agreements drawn from four urban regions of China to explain the choices of environmental collaboration agreements among cities. Examples of three forms of interlocal agreements—informal, formal, and imposed agreements—are analyzed. Ordinal logistic regressions are estimated to test which factors predicted by the ICA framework influence the form of collaboration selected. The results indicate that the involvement of national or provincial government, the number of policy actors involved, heterogeneity of economic conditions, and differences in administrative level among the actors involved influence how collaboration agreements are structured. Examining the choice of agreement type contributes to the understanding of interlocal collaboration and provides practical insights for public managers to structure interlocal collaboration.     

Institutional Collective Action During COVID-19: Lessons in Local Economic Development

At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with other governments as well as with organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to offerings of multi-institutional grants and low-interest loans. However, some newer supply- and demand-side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about the collaborative economic development actions that governments are taking and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.     

试论集体行动的困境

集体行动问题是现代经济学中的分支之一——公共选择理论的主要研究对象。美国著名经济学家曼瑟尔·奥尔森（Mancur Olson）1965年出版的《集体行动的逻辑》可谓研究该领域的奠基之作。他站在方法论的个人主义立场,认为集团是由各构成主体的自发意志所形成的,其理论主要阐述的是以谋求集体财富为目的的集团规模问题。其论点为旨在获得集体财富的集团,其规模的大小直接关系到目标能否实现的问题。具体而言,他认为规模小的集团比规模大的集团更能实现集体行动。但在书中,奥尔森认为规模小的集团情况复杂,故其研究的对象为大集团,更为确切地说强调大集团的“集体行动的困境”。     

Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals

The authors use the Institutional Collective Action Framework to analyze the barriers, opposition, and opportunities for residential pharmaceutical disposal programs in the United States via a case study on a series of take‐back programs pioneered in the state of Washington by local and state governments, as well as the corresponding backlash from federal agencies. While successful in some ways, these innovative solutions directly challenged the competing federal policy regimes controlled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and, to a lesser extent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Findings from case studies suggest that functional dilemmas created by existing institutions with entrenched regulatory regimes are a key challenge to finding efficient solutions to vertical ICA dilemmas. Conclusions, then, connect to the broader ICA research agenda, and implications for multi‐level governance issues.     

重大灾害中的集体行动及类型化分析

面对繁琐复杂的灾害表层现象时,如何进一步与主流社会学理论对话,这是未来灾害社会学研究重要的议题和努力方向.通过引入集体行动视角,将灾害中的集体行动具体化为“灾区内灾民集体行动”与“灾区外志愿者集体行动”两种类型.灾民的苦痛及重建的困境越大,对灾害的解读就越倾向“人祸”因素,并通过“搜索信息行动”、“定义情境行动”和“咎责行动”,引起大量的抗争性负向集体行动,甚至威胁到政府的政治安全目标以及社会的公正和稳定性.政府应通过灾害信息的及时颁布、专家诠释等策略影响灾害情境定调取向,将灾害导向“天灾”而非政府的疏失.灾后资源缺乏并非负向集体行动产生的主要原因,更重要的是弱势群体的受灾风险偏高.灾害治理的最高境界就是通过对媒体和民间力量的监督以及公平性机制的建构,将灾害情境中的集体行动整合成救灾和灾后复原的正向行动而规避其负面风险.     

Democracy and Capitalism: Collective Action Theory and Structural Analysis

The problem which I address in this paper consists in the connection between democracy and capitalism. I begin by specifying a model of actor theory which indicates a number of methods of achieving co-operation between actors I then review different structural theories of democracy which link up with these methods. Against this background I then seek to clarify—and to some extent evaluate—the arguments which different researchers have adduced in support of the thesis that capitalism is a prerequisite for democracy.     

Social Networks and Collective Action

Despite growing attention to the role of social context in determining political participation, the effect of the structure of social networks remains little examined. This article introduces a model of interdependent decision making within social networks, in which individuals have heterogeneous motivations to participate, and networks are defined via a qualitative typology mirroring common empirical contexts. The analysis finds that some metrics for networks' influence—size, the prevalence of weak ties, the presence of elites—have a more complex interaction with network structure and individual motivations than has been previously acknowledged. For example, in some contexts additional network ties decrease participation. This presents the potential for selection bias in empirical studies. The model offers a fuller characterization of the role of network structure and predicts expected levels of participation across network types and distributions of motivations as a function of network size, weak and strong ties, and elite influence.     

Heterogeneous Preferences and Collective Action

In recent years, scholarshave turned to alternative representationsof utility to capture motivationalheterogeneity across individuals. In theresearch reported here, we examine twomodels of heterogeneous utility –linear-altruism and inequity-aversion – inthe context of two-person, social dilemmagames. Empirical tests are conducteddrawing on data from experiments andsurveys. We find that the model ofinequity-aversion accounts for asubstantial proportion of the preferencetypes and behavior that are not explainedby the standard model of self-interestedpreferences. In contrast, the altruismmodel does not provide a significantincrease in explanatory power over theinequity-aversion model.     

The Logic of Private and Collective Action

Since Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action (1965), it is impossible for political scientists to conceive of political participation without reference to his powerful argument linking numbers of participants, public goods, and participatory outcomes. What is puzzling is the poor empirical support for this argument in the domain where it should work best, namely explaining business political activity. Olson thought his arguments principally applicable to economic groups, and for the empirical development of his arguments Olson drew heavily on business interests, the most active segment of the interest group community. We explore these arguments with business political activities data by examining the statistical performance of various measures of market structure in determining business political activity, and find little empirical support. We do offer an alternative basis for business behavior lodged in both private and collective goods that preserves business rationality and also helps explain not only the amount of business political participation but the modes of business participation .     

Collective Action and Citizen Responses to Global Warming

This paper expands the relevance of the collective interest model of mass political action to explain collective-action behavior in the context of global warming and climate change. The analysis is an attempt to answer Ostrom’s call for a behavioral model of collective action that can be generalized beyond political protest to other collective-action problems. We elaborate, specify, and empirically test a collective interest model approach to citizen policy support, environmental political participation, and environmental behavior related to the issue of global warming. Key elements of the collective interest model—perceived risk, personal efficacy, and environmental values—are found to be directly, and positively, related to support of government policies and personal behaviors that affect global warming. We also discuss the links between the collective interest model and other important approaches to political behavior.

The Consequences of Collective Action: An Incomplete-Contracts Approach

Public policy may be determined as much by what cannot be agreed to by politicians and organized interests as by what can. Focusing on the inability of organized groups to credibly promise that their members will fully report revenues to tax authorities, I develop an incomplete-contracts lobbying model that shows that the provision of collective goods may be influenced by the anticipated tax compliance of economic sectors as well as by the organization of interests. Data from a survey of firms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are broadly supportive of the theory: the ability of firms to hide revenues from tax authorities rivals conventional collective-action variables in explaining variation in collective-goods provision, but only in that part of the postcommunist world where differences in revenue hiding across sectors are especially large.     

农村“公共池塘”资源治理中的集体行动困境与制度分析——基于安徽桐城市青草镇黄砂资源过度采集问题的个案研究

奥斯特罗姆提出的自主治理制度为中国农村“公共池塘”资源治理中的集体行动困境的研究提供了一种新的思路.文章以安徽省桐城市青草镇黄砂资源过度采集可能导致的溃坝危险问题作为案例研究对象,基于奥斯特罗姆提出的自主治理理论,在2012年对安徽省桐城市青草镇进行了实地调研,分析了该地区黄砂资源过度采集问题出现的原因,总结了村民在黄砂资源过度采集制度中的合作困境,尝试进行理论阐释,同时提出解决该区域黄砂资源过度采集问题的治理建议,探讨建立黄砂资源采集制度的可能性,即相对于政府的直接经营和管理,相关利益各方为主体多方参与的自主治理制度可能更有效率,以期对于扩展我们对农村“公共池塘”资源治理中的集体行动困境和村民自治的研究具有重要的理论和实践意义.     

Republican Freedom,Popular Control,and Collective Action

Republicans hold that people are dominated merely in virtue of others' having unconstrained abilities to frustrate their choices. They argue further that public officials may dominate citizens unless subject to popular control. Critics identify a dilemma. To maintain the possibility of popular control, republicans must attribute to the people an ability to control public officials merely in virtue of the possibility that they might coordinate their actions. But if the possibility of coordination suffices for attributing abilities to groups, then, even in the best case, countless groups will be dominating because it will be possible for their members to coordinate their actions with the aim of frustrating others' choices. We argue the dilemma is apparent only. To make our argument, we present a novel interpretation of the republican concept of domination with the help of a game‐theoretic model that clarifies the significance of collective action problems for republican theory.     

Collusion, Collective Action and Protection: Theory and Evidence

This paper provides a novel explanation forthe formation of protectionist lobby groupsin imperfectly competitive sectors. Thelevel of collusion is shown to be a crucialdeterminant of the ability of firms tosustain lobbying. We show that greatercollusion reduces firm contributionsto tariff lobbying, when the governmentvalues welfare sufficiently and thecross-price elasticity between the domesticand foreign goods is sufficiently high. The empirical evidence from the U.S.supports the theory. Greater collusionreduces the level of PAC contributions.     

The Fog of Humanitarianism: Collective Action Problems and Learning-Challenged Organizations

This essay explores humanitarian action, and by effect post-conflict state-building, in the so-called new wars of the post-cold war period – especially the targeting of civilians, the proliferation of non-state actors, and the perils of war economies. The host of reactions by aid agencies, termed ‘new humanitarianisms’, has called into question traditional operating principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence while the system has experienced dramatic increases in the number of organizations and available funds. Arguing that too little institutional learning has yet occurred, the authors call for changing the culture of aid agencies and investing in information gathering and sharing, policy analysis, and planning. In an era when reflection time is as valuable as reaction time, they stress the need to develop a humanitarian equivalent of military science.     

The Phenomenon of Collective Action: Modeling Institutions as Structures of Care

This essay develops a theory of how institutions can work through the web of social relationships that exist in a place rather than through formal, bureaucratic lines of authority. In contrast to models that characterize institutions as organizational structures, roles, and patterns of exchange, this model depicts institutions as constituted primarily through the active working and reworking of relationships. Rather than adopt the network literature's focus on the overall pattern of relationships and exchanges carried out between policy actors, the author focuses directly on the nature of the relationships themselves and portrays the institution as the playing out of these relationships, employing Carol Gilligan's notion of care. The model of care is used to analyze the evolution, unraveling, and restoration of resource management systems on the Turtle Islands in Southeast Asia. The model provides lessons for institution building, especially for community-centered governance.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.