The private stake in public goods: overcoming the illogic of collective action |
| |
Authors: | Matthew A Crenson |
| |
Institution: | (1) The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA |
| |
Abstract: | Conclusion According to the Logic of Collective Action, most actions in the service of common interests are either not logical or not collective. In a large group, the argument
goes, individual action counts for so little in the realization of common interests that it makes no sense for a person to
consider group interests when choosing a course of personal conduct. Only private interests are decisive. Their fulfillment,
at least, depends in a substantial way on one's own behavior. Individual actions designed to achieve private advantage are
therefore rational. Actions aimed at collective goods are a waste of time and effort.
Occasionally, of course, a person acting on the basis of private interests may inadvertently provide some collective good
from which many other people derive benefit. This is what happens in the case of the Greek shipping tycoon. But it occurs
only because one person's private good fortuitously coincides with the collective good of a larger group. From the tycoon's
perspective, there are no collective interests at stake in the sponsorship of an opera broadcast, only his own private interests.
Nor does his decision to underwrite a broadcast take account of the other people who will listen to it. His action is a solitary
one designed to serve a private interest, and it is perfectly consistent with Olson's argument concerning the illogic of collective
action, because it is not grounded in collective interest and is not a case of collective behavior.
Olson's theory permits people to share collective interests but not to act upon them voluntarily. The only acknowledged exception
occurs in the case of very small groups, where each member's contribution to the common good represents such a large share
of the total that any person's default becomes noticeable to others and may lead them to reduce or cancel their own contributions.
In this instance, at least, one person's actions can make a perceptible difference for the chance of realizing collective
interests, and it is therefore sensible for each person to consider these collective interests (and one another's conduct)
when deciding whether or not to support group efforts. Outside of small groups, however, Olson finds no circumstances in which
voluntary collective action is rational.
But in fact the conditions that make collective action rational are broader than this and perhaps more fundamental to Olson's
theory. They are inherent in the very ‘collectiveness’ of collective goods - their status as social or group artifacts. In
the absence of a group, there can be no such thing as a collective good. But in the absence of mutual awareness and interdependence,
it becomes extremely difficult to conceive of a social group. The assumption that group members are uninfluenced by one another's
contributions to a collective good is no mere theoretical simplification. It may be a logical impossibility. Being a member
of a group, even a very large one, implies at the very least that one's own conduct takes place against a background of group
behavior. Olson's assumptions do not acknowledge this minimal connection between individual and group behavior, and they inhibit
recognition of the elementary social processes that explain why slovenly conduct attracts special attention on clean streets,
or why the initial violations of group norms are more momentous than later violations.
It may be argued, of course, that the groups of Olson's theory are not functioning social groups with a collective existence,
but only categories or classes of people who happen to share a collective interest. The logic of collective action is intended
precisely to show why these ‘potential’ groups are prevented from converting themselves into organized social groups whose
members act in a coordinated way. In such latent groups, perhaps, members are unaware of one another, and Olson's assumption
that they are uninfluenced by one another's conduct becomes a reasonable one. Another implication, however, is that Olson's
theory is subject to unacknowledged restrictions. The logic of the free ride is for potential groups. It may not hold for
actual ones. The distinction is exemplified, in the case of public sanitation, by the difference between what is rational
on a clean street and what is rational on a dirty one.
The logic of the free ride does not make sense for the members of an ongoing group that is already operating to produce collective
goods such as public order or public sanitation. While this represents a notable limitation upon the scope of Olson's theory,
it apparently leaves the logic of collective action undisturbed where potential or latent groups are concerned. But suppose
that a member of an unmobilized group wants her colleagues to contribute to the support of a collective good that she particularly
values. Her problem is to create a situation in which such contributions make sense to her fellow members. As we have already
seen in the case of the neighborhood street-sweeper, one possible solution is to provide the collective good herself. If it
has the appropriate characteristics, its very existence may induce other members of the latent group to contribute to its
maintenance. This is not one of those cases in which one person's private interest fortuitously coincides with the collective
interest of a larger group. The neighborhood street-sweeper is acting on behalf of an interest that she is conscious of sharing
with her neighbors. Her aim is to arouse collective action in support of that interest. She does not expect to pay for public
cleanliness all by herself, or to enjoy its benefits all by herself.
Her role bears a general resemblance to the one that some analysts have defined for the political entrepreneur who seeks to
profit personally by supplying a collective good to the members of a large group (Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young 1971).
Like the neighborhood street-sweeper, the entrepreneur finds it advantageous to confer a collective benefit on others. But
the similarity does not extend to the nature of the advantage or the manner in which it is secured. The entrepreneur induces
people to contribute toward the cost of a collective good by creating an organizational apparatus through which group members
can pool their resources. The existence of this collection mechanism can also strengthen individual members' confidence that
their colleagues' contributions are forthcoming. What the entrepreneur gains is private profit - the difference between the
actual cost of a collective good and the total amount that group members are prepared to pay for it.
By contrast, the neighborhood street-sweeper induces support for a collective good, not by facilitating contributions, but
by increasing the costs that come from the failure to contribute. As a result of her efforts, she gains a clean street whose
benefits (and costs) she shares with her fellow residents. She takes her profit in the form of collective betterment rather
than private gain, and her conduct, along with the behavior of her neighbors, demonstrates that effective selfinterest can
extend beyond private interest.
Self-interest can also give rise to continuing cooperative relationships. The street-sweeper, acting in her own interest,
brings into being a cooperative enterprise in which she and her fellow residents jointly contribute to the production of a
collective good. Cooperation in this case does not come about through negotiation or exchange among equal parties. It can
be the work of a single actor who contributes the lion's share of the resources needed to establish a collective good, in
the expectation that its existence will induce others to join in maintaining it. The tactic is commonplace as a means of eliciting
voluntary collective action, and it operates on a scale far larger than the street or the neighborhood. Government, paradoxically,
probably relies on it more than most institutions With its superior power and resources, it may be society's most frequent
originator of voluntary collective action. Its policies, imposed through coercion and financed by compulsory taxation, generate
a penumbra of cooperation without which coercion might become ineffectual. By providing certain collective goods, government
authorities can move citizens to make voluntary contributions to the maintenance of these goods. The stark dichotomy between
private voluntary action and public coercion - one of the mainstays of American political rhetoric - may be as misleading
as the identification of self-interest with selfishness.
There is more at stake here than the voluntary production of collective goods. Continuing cooperative behavior can have other
results as well. Once group members begin to expect cooperation from one another, norms of cooperation and fairness are likely
to develop. Axelrod (1986) has suggested that modes of conduct which have favorable outcomes for the people who pursue them
tend to evolve into group norms. Public-spirited action that serves self-interest could therefore engender a principled attachment
to the common good, undermining the assumption of self-interestedness that gives the logic of collective action its bite.
Laboratory studies of cooperative behavior have already demonstrated that experimental subjects have far less regard for narrow
self-interest than rational choice theory requires (Dawes 1980). In one extended series of collective action experiments,
however, Marwell and Ames (1981) found a single group of subjects who approximated the self-interested free-riders of Olson's
theory. They were graduate students in economics. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|