Collective Action
Coordinated action toward a shared goal, and the free-rider problem that makes it hard.
Collective action is coordinated effort toward an outcome no participant could achieve alone. Its central difficulty, formalized by Mancur Olson, is that the benefit is usually non-excludable: if a campaign wins, everyone in the affected group gains, whether or not they participated. Each individual therefore has a rational incentive to let others bear the cost — the free-rider problem — and the result is that groups with a shared interest routinely fail to act on it.
The mechanisms that overcome it are well cataloged. Selective incentives give participants something non-participants do not get. Small groups work better than large ones because contribution is visible. Conditional commitment — I will act if enough others do — removes the risk of being the only one, which is why pledge-based organizing works and why a stated threshold is a real mechanism rather than a slogan. Social norms and solidarity convert a cost into an identity, which is what durable organizations are for.
Elinor Ostrom's work on commons governance added the most hopeful finding: real communities manage shared resources sustainably far more often than the theory predicted, using locally-devised rules, graduated sanctions, and their own dispute resolution. The pessimistic model describes strangers; it describes neighbors much less well.
See also4
Rent Strike
Tenants collectively withholding rent to force negotiation with a landlord or policymaker.
Meaning & Society9 connections
Broken Windows Theory
The hypothesis that visible disorder invites serious crime, and the long dispute over whether the evidence supports it.
Meaning & Society8 connections
Wiki
A collection of interlinked pages that anyone with access can edit, named for the Hawaiian word for quick.
Meaning & Society15 connections
Plain Language
Writing so that the intended reader can find, understand, and use the information the first time.
Meaning & Society27 connections
Related6
Nearby in the graph rather than deliberately chosen. Looser, sometimes surprising.
Linked from17
- AstroturfingMeaning & Society
Organized advocacy disguised as spontaneous, independent public support.
- Battle RoyalePlay & Games
A many-player elimination format that uses a shrinking play area to force an ending the players would otherwise avoid.
- Broken Windows TheoryMeaning & Society
The hypothesis that visible disorder invites serious crime, and the long dispute over whether the evidence supports it.
- Commons-Based Peer ProductionMeaning & Society
Large-scale production coordinated by modular tasks and volunteer contribution rather than price or hierarchy.
- Cunningham's LawMeaning & Society
The observation that posting a wrong answer online gets a faster correction than asking a question.
- ExternalityMeaning & Society
A cost or benefit of a transaction that falls on someone outside it.
- JaywalkingMeaning & Society
A pedestrian offense whose 1920s American origins are widely read as an effort to shift blame for road deaths onto pedestrians.
- Modern Monetary TheoryMeaning & Society
A macroeconomic account holding that a currency issuer is constrained by real resources and inflation rather than by revenue.
- Network EffectMeaning & Society
A good whose value to each user grows as more people use it.
- Overton WindowMeaning & Society
The range of political positions treated as acceptable to hold at a given moment.
- Plain LanguageMeaning & Society
Writing so that the intended reader can find, understand, and use the information the first time.
- Rent StrikeMeaning & Society
Tenants collectively withholding rent to force negotiation with a landlord or policymaker.
- Right to RepairMeaning & Society
the movement for consumer and independent-shop access to the parts, tools, and information needed to fix a device.
- Terror Management TheoryMeaning & Society
The experimental claim that reminders of death increase defense of one's worldview and self-esteem.
- Tragedy of the CommonsMeaning & Society
Hardin's parable of shared-resource collapse, and Ostrom's evidence that it is not inevitable.
- Universal Basic IncomeMeaning & Society
An unconditional cash payment to every member of a population, and its contested design and evidence.
- WikiMeaning & Society
A collection of interlinked pages that anyone with access can edit, named for the Hawaiian word for quick.