the common interest of the members of the same group) is necessary to the very existence of an organization, then how could the BGW's argument still make sense? An institution could not go against its members' interest without imploding but it surely could adapt to a change in this interest. Indeed, if, as Mancur Olson and others have implied, the collective good (i.e. īut the notion of collective or common good seems to provide an argument in favor of Michael Hiscox in his opposition to BGW about the reason for the adoption of the RTAA. Second, small groups are more powerful than large ones because, due to a higher benefit per capita, there are less incentive to free-ride. First, large groups are most costly and thus more difficult to form than small groups.
Collective action problem how to#
members of the group must decide individually what they want, what they are prepared to contribute to their collective enterprise, and how to coordinate their efforts with those of others. Olson also stresses a very important point about groups and collective good: the larger the group, the less likely it will be to reach its goal and provide an optimal amount of a collective good In their essay The Political Economy of Trading States: Factor Specificity, Collective Action Problems, and Domestic Institutions, Alt&Gilligan call up this hypothesis in order to explain the Pareto-Schattschneider puzzle, which asks the question of how policies that benefit only a majority of the population can be enacted. problems inherent in the efforts of a group to reach and implement agreements. Īlthough, as Olson reminds his readers, the idea of "common interest" promoted by a group goes all the way back to Aristotle, we can still use it as a means to understand some contemporary issues brought up by scholars such as James Alt, Michael Gilligan and BGW (Bailey, Goldstein, Weingast). In a book cleverly entitled The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965), he underlines that "one purpose that is nonetheless characteristic of most organizations is the furtherance of the interest of their members." There is therefore a notion of "common interest" that is paramount to the formation and the sustainability of any group or organization.
Mancur Olson, an American economist (1932-1998), wrote about organizations and the logic of collective action. In the realm of international political economy actors are numerous and decisions highly strategic, which makes collective action arguably one of the most interesting problems in the field.
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