How can collective action evolve when individuals benefit from cooperation regardless of whether they pay its participation costs? According to one influential perspective, collective action problems are common, especially when groups are large, but may be solved when individuals who have more to gain from the collective good or can produce it at low costs provide it to others as a byproduct. S...

The current project investigated affective and strategic determinants of participation in collective actions by taking a multidimensional approach to collective identity (see Cameron, 2004) and investigating rational decision-making processes. A field study was conducted during an important student strike within the Canadian province of Quebec. One hundred and eighty four students attending the...

We merge the current approach to collective action failure based on free-riding (Olson, 1965) with the previous approach focusing on the distortions created by the need of leaders (Michels, 1911 and Max Weber, 1918). Group goals and incentives are set by leaders in view to maximize the probability of success —rather than the group expected payoff. In spite of not being group optimal, success ma...

We propose a dynamic, probabilistic model of collective action. While agents’ incentives are approximately captured by the normal form suggested in Palfrey and Rosenthal (1984), agents’ behavior is only boundedly rational. The model deÞnes a discrete time, discrete state Markov process. We identify the process’ unique limiting distribution and show that in the long-run even in large populations...

Collective Action and Agroindustries Two fundamental global economic tendencies have caused a shift in interest towards promoting rural agroenterprises and agroindustrialization to combat rural poverty. Increasing income levels and demographic changes, i.e. increased female labor force participation, has fueled demand for high-value and processed products. Structural adjustment and liberalizaCo...

We analyze the e ect of inequality in the distribution of endowment of private inputs (e.g., land, wealth) that are complementary in production with collective inputs (e.g., contribution to public goods such as irrigation and extraction from common-property resources) on eÆciency in a simple class of collective action problems. In an environment where transaction costs prevent the eÆcient alloc...

We elucidate the dynamics of ongoing collective action among intentional agents with diverse beliefs and imperfect information. Their decisions on whether or not to contribute to the collective good depend not only on the past but also on their expectations as to how their actions will affect those of others. We show that in attempts at collective action the onset of overall cooperation can tak...

Traditionally political scientists have conceived of political participation as oriented toward the political sphere, particularly the political system, and involving people who join together in various kinds of groups to make claims on government. Real-life examples as well as empirical and theoretical studies in the social sciences show that it is high time for us to rethink this view of poli...