Who Will Do It? Volunteering to Change Cooperation Rules in a Heterogeneous Population

Author(s):  
Klarita Gërxhani ◽  
Beate Volker ◽  
Jacqueline van Breemen

Abstract We study whether and when a second-order collective action problem, like the change of existing formal rules governing cooperation, can be resolved to ultimately solve first-order collective good dilemmas. We do so by examining the conditions under which individuals change cooperation rules when both their material incentives to cooperate and their social preferences for outcome distributions differ. Our experimental findings show that proselfs who benefit the most from cooperation are most likely to initiate a rule change to a higher minimum contribution level. Regarding prosocials, we find that their underlying motives in favour or against this rule change vary depending on their relative earnings’ position. If they are ‘wealthy’, that is, they have a higher earnings potential, they are more concerned about equality. When they are relatively ‘less wealthy’, they seem to care more about enhancing collective outcomes.

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-jin Yang

There is significant variance in the strategies of labor market flexibility under the same pressure of globalization. This article attempts to explain that variance by examining closely the Korean case, with particular attention to the response of labor, one of the most intractable actors in the reform process. After theorizing the nature of social welfare as a quasi-collective good and hypothesizing labor's responses based on Olson's theory of collective action, the study seeks to explain Korea's low commitment to flexicurity and the resultant dualism in the labor market. The core argument here is that the collective action problem among atomized corporate unions has led to high employment protection for regular workers in big business at the expense of marginal workers without appropriate social protection.


Author(s):  
Justin Buchler

The manner in which the House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 demonstrated the principles of the unified model and the concept of “preference-preserving influence.” Representative Bart Stupak led a group of pro-life Democrats who threatened to sink the Senate’s unamended version of the bill, which the House needed to pass once Scott Brown won a special election, and Democrats could no longer invoke cloture on a House-Senate reconciliation bill. Any one of Stupak’s group could vote against the bill without causing the bill to fail and had electoral incentives to do so, but each had policy reasons to prefer passage, meaning that they were subject to a collective action problem. Party leadership solved that collective action problem, and without party leadership doing so, the Affordable Care Act would not have passed.


Author(s):  
Justin Buchler

This chapter presents a unified model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting, built around a party leadership election. First, a legislative caucus selects a party leader who campaigns based on a platform of a disciplinary system. Once elected, that leader runs the legislative session, in which roll call votes occur. Then elections occur, and incumbents face re-election with the positions they incrementally adopted. When the caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, members will elect a leader who solves the collective action problem of sincere voting with “preference-preserving influence.” That leader will threaten to punish legislators who bow to electoral pressure to vote as centrists. Consequently, legislators vote sincerely as extremists and get slightly lower vote shares, but they offset that lost utility with policy gains that they couldn’t have gotten without party influence. Party leaders will rarely pressure legislators to vote insincerely.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Philip J. Wilson

The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.


Author(s):  
Mandi Astola

AbstractStudies in collective intelligence have shown that suboptimal cognitive traits of individuals can lead a group to succeed in a collective cognitive task, in recent literature this is called mandevillian intelligence. Analogically, as Mandeville has suggested, the moral vices of individuals can sometimes also lead to collective good. I suggest that this mandevillian morality can happen in many ways in collaborative activities. Mandevillian morality presents a challenge for normative virtue theories in ethics. The core of the problem is that mandevillian morality implies that individual vice is, in some cases, valuable. However, normative virtue theories generally see vice as disvaluable. A consequence of this is that virtue theories struggle to account for the good that can emerge in a collective. I argue that normative virtue theories can in fact accommodate for mandevillian emergent good. I put forward three distinctive features that allow a virtue theory to do so: a distinction between individual and group virtues, a distinction between motivational and teleological virtues, and an acknowledgement of the normativity of “vicious” roles in groups.


2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1759) ◽  
pp. 20130081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Willems ◽  
Barbara Hellriegel ◽  
Carel P. van Schaik

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Pitlik

Abstract Due to the incentives of both suppliers and users of policy advice the influence of economists on government decisions is almost negligible. This paper aims to explore the prospects of policy advice addressed to the general public as a countervailing power. It is argued that in order to have some impact on public opinion economists must rely primarily on propaganda and have to overcome a serious collective action problem. Yet, the organization of the academic system provides no incentives for economists to fulfil the role of general-public-oriented advisers.


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