Challenges for Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-169
Author(s):  
Harvey Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Large Groups

The theories laid out step by step in the preceding chapters are not only of intrinsic scientific interest; they are also potentially of great practical use. Using the UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as an example, this chapter begins by exploring various ways in which attention to our three kinds of interacting landscapes might enable us to tackle various collective action problems more effectively. It then considers how insights from the study of imagistic group bonding could be used to prevent or resolve intergroup conflicts, whether by defusing groups bent on violence or by rechannelling their extreme loyalty to the group in more peaceful and consensual ways. Moving from this to the problems posed by populism and polarization in large groups, attention then turns to the role of the doctrinal mode in fuelling dissent and the breakdown of cooperation, but also its potential to help us coordinate positive action on global issues, such as the climate crisis, more effectively than ever before.

scholarly journals Agency in historical institutionalism coalitional work in the creation, maintenance, and change of institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Emmenegger
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
Sociological Institutionalism ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
The Creation

AbstractInstitutionalism gives priority to structure over agency. Yet institutions have never developed and operated without the intervention of interested groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the role of agency in historical institutionalism. Based on recent contributions following the coalitional turn and drawing on insights from sociological institutionalism, it argues that agency plays a key role in the creation and maintenance of social coalitions that stabilize but also challenge institutions. Without such agency, no coalition can be created, maintained, or changed. Similarly, without a supporting coalition, no contested institution can survive. Yet, due to collective action problems, such coalitional work is challenging. This coalitional perspective offers a robust role for agency in historical institutionalism, but it also explains why institutions remain stable despite agency. In addition, this paper forwards several portable propositions that allow for the identification of who is likely to develop agency and what these actors do.

scholarly journals Collective action problems and the role of South African business in national and regional accords

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoli Nattrass
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
South African ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Local Development ◽  
National Level ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Incomes Policy

This article examines some of the collective action problems which beset South African business in national and regional accords. The first part concludes that incomes policy type accords at national level are unlikely to be successful in South Africa. The main part of the article considers accords at subnational level where conflicts of interest are more easily (but not entirely) resolved. This is done by means of two case studies of business acting collectively to promote regional or local development. The first looks at the role of organized business in the Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC). It is suggested that the geographical divide between the various business organizations undermines the potential for collective action. The second describes the more successful local housing accord which was negotiated in Port Elizabeth.

What Is Political Science For?

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Mansbridge
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Infinite Number ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Collective Action Problems

This address advances three ideas. First, political science as a discipline has a mandate to help human beings govern themselves. Second, within this mandate we should be focusing, more than we do now, on creating legitimate coercion. In a world of increasing interdependence we now face an almost infinite number of collective action problems created when something we need or want involves a “free-access good.” We need coercion to solve these collective action problems. The best coercion is normatively legitimate coercion. Democratic theory, however, has focused more on preventing tyranny than on how to legitimate coercion. Finally, our discipline has neglected an important source of legitimate coercion: negotiation to agreement. Recognizing the central role of negotiation in politics would shed a different light on our relatively unexamined democratic commitments to transparency in process and contested elections. This analysis is overall both descriptive and aspirational, arguing that helping human beings to govern themselves has been in the DNA of our profession since its inception.

scholarly journals Cities Towards Global Climate Governance: How the Practices of City Diplomacy Foster Hybrid Multilateralism

2021 ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
Nikola Strachová
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Agreements ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
International Climate Agreements ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Global Values

One of the effects of globalization is the increasing number of transnational ties that central governments not only ceased to control but also ceased to participate in; therefore, in recent decades, cities have been increasingly motivated to respond to international issues and initiate various contacts with foreign economic, cultural, and political centres. This article examines practices of city diplomacy in light of the current climate crisis. Albeit cities could be in conflict with their central government, they are executing the global climate agenda. Nonetheless, how do we frame cities’ autonomous activities in the global governance agenda? The article seeks to determine whether the framework of hybrid multilateralism is the niche for cities to assume the role of the central government in defending common global values such as preservation of the environment when the state fails to do so. Based on a dataset consisting of various subnational initiatives responding to climate change, we suggest a remarkable growth in the pledges to the international climate agreements’ commitments involving many subnational actors. Through these pledges, cities enter the international negotiations with various partners under hybrid policy architecture. Cities hold an enormous potential to influence the global conversation on climate change agenda. Furthermore, we conclude that cities are taking on the states’ role in global issues when they identify the inadequacy of the central governments’ action. Their conflict position forces them to carry out autonomous activities and fosters the new phenomenon of hybrid multilateralism.

Cooperation, Norms, and Moral Motivation

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Normative Belief ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Humean View ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractIt has been said that norms can solve collective action problems. To endorse a norm is to hold a normative belief. This article insists that we try to isolate moral motivation - motivation by moral belief - as such, and that its existence cannot be taken for granted. Accepting the Humean view that belief alone cannot motivate, the article rejects the thesis that there is a necessary or conceptual connection between moral belief and motivation; it warns that in looking for motivational powers or effects of normative belief we must take care to rule out the possibility that the motivation is merely derived from existing desires; and it argues that deliberation and evaluation do not produce desires purely out of beliefs. These considerations are among the necessary preliminaries to getting clear about the role of ‘social capital’ in solving collective action problems.

Limits of State Strength: Toward an Institutionalist View of Economic Development

1992 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Doner
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Development Process ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Newly Industrializing Countries ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
State Strength ◽  
Collective Action Problems

Analyses of economic growth have drawn on the experiences of the East Asian newly industrializing countries to highlight the contribution of cohesive and autonomous states in the resolution of market failures. Within an explicit collective action and public goods framework, this article argues for an institutionalist approach to development that incorporates, but also goes beyond, statism. Through an examination of auto manufacturing in five countries in Southeast and Northeast Asia, the article identifies specific collective action problems central to the development process, and it explores limits to the capacities of even strong states to resolve such problems. The article stresses the role of private sectors and joint publicprivate sector institutions, identifies systematic differences within and among local entrepreneurs with regard to development issues, emphasizes the need for research on factors influencing the supply of institutions; and argues for an approach to development that emphasizes cooperation among domestic interests rather than domination.

Network

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Ray Brescia
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Action Problems

This chapter examines the role of trust in solving collective action problems and the ways in which translocal networks harness this trust to advance broad social change. Such trust is present in the social relationships one forms with others, what is often referred to as one's social capital. From the Sons of Liberty to the civil rights movement, different social movements have utilized different means of communications to form, identify individuals who shared common beliefs, bind people together, and animate collective action. They often did this in networks, and networks of a particular kind. As the name implies, the translocal network is one that may span a wide geographic area and can harness the power of a large group of committed individuals but is also made up of smaller cells where face-to-face communication between individual members can occur. The chapter then looks at examples of the social movements that have emerged in social innovation moments to show how they have generally tended to organize themselves into translocal networks, at least until a means of communication emerged that allowed organizers to form different types of organizations.

scholarly journals To Buy or Not to Buy? The Moral Relevance of the Individual Demand in Everyday Purchase Situations

Food Ethics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernward Gesang ◽  
Rebecca Ullrich
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Moral Relevance ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Individual Demand ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Meat Market

AbstractThe question of the moral relevance of the individual demand is fundamental to many purchase decisions of daily consumer life. Can a single purchase make a difference for the better or worse? Each individual consumer could argue that companies are unlikely to adjust their production due to one single item more or less being sold. He might therefore decide not to change his consumption behavior but instead to rely on the effort of others, a pattern commonly referred to as collective action problem. In this article, we study collective action problems with regard to everyday purchase situations. We base our discussion on Shelly Kagan’s famous article “Do I make a difference?” and critically discuss a central assumption of his model: the symmetric relationship between supply and demand. We find that Kagan’s solution to collective action problems is not true a priori but has to be evaluated in certain empirical surroundings. We therefore discuss the approach in the context of the European meat market and demonstrate that Kagan’s argument does not provide a universal solution to cases of meat purchasing. We conclude with an outlook regarding the role of consumer ethics.

Chairs as policy entrepreneurs in multilateral negotiations

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 653-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
SPYROS BLAVOUKOS ◽  
DIMITRIS BOURANTONIS
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Policy Entrepreneur ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurs ◽  
Multilateral Negotiations ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities

AbstractChairs have a significant potential effect on the bargaining structure and conduct of multilateral negotiations, addressing collective action problems that arise in decentralised bargaining. We examine the role of the Chair as a policy entrepreneur in multilateral negotiations, identifying the parameters that increase the Chair's entrepreneurship potential and condition the outcome of the Chair's entrepreneurial activities. We cluster the identified parameters in three groups of organisational attributes, comprising the Chair'smandate, availableresourcesand (formal)constraints, in particular decision-making rules. We use this typology to analyse four important case studies within the UN setting.

Community policing amidst diversity: exploring the role of inter-group trust in two Cape Town neighbourhoods

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-517
Author(s):  
Ann K. Karreth
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Group Trust ◽  
Structure Patterns

AbstractWhy are some diverse communities in sub-Saharan Africa able to achieve mutually beneficial collective action while others remain trapped in social dilemmas? This paper argues that inter-group trust plays an important role in explaining when and where communities succeed in collective endeavours. It develops an argument that illustrates how demographic contextual variables structure patterns of inter-group trust and prospects for local goods provision in diverse communities. It then assesses the argument by analysing community policing in two heterogeneous neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. The paper demonstrates how crosscutting cleavage structures in one Cape Town suburb bolstered the development of inter-group trust across the community, thus helping the community garner participation in community policing. It also documents how reinforcing cleavage structures in another Cape Town suburb has helped to suppress the development of inter-group trust, making the resolution of collective action problems more difficult.

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