scholarly journals Sustaining Scholarly Infrastructures through Collective Action: The lessons that Olson can teach us

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Neylon
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Political Economics ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
The Political ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Club Goods ◽  
Large Groups

AbstractInfrastructures for data, such as repositories, curation systems, aggregators, indexes and standards are public goods. This means that finding sustainable economic models to support them is a challenge. This is due to free-loading, where someone who does not contribute to the support of the infrastructure nonetheless gains the benefit of it. The work of Mancur Olson (1974) suggests there are only three ways to address this for large groups: compulsion (often as some form of taxation) to support the infrastructure; the provision of non-collective (club) goods limited to those who contribute as a side-effect of providing the collective good; or mechanisms that lower the effective number of participants in the negotiation (oligopoly).In this paper I use Olson’s framework to analyze existing scholarly infrastructures and proposals for the sustainability of new infrastructures. I argue that the focus on sustainability models prior to seeking a set of agreed governance principles is the wrong approach. Rather we need to understand how to navigate from club-like to public-like goods. We need to define the communities that contribute and identify club-like benefits for those contributors. We need interoperable principles of governance and resourcing to provide public-like goods and we should draw on the political economics of taxation to develop this.

scholarly journals Sustaining Scholarly Infrastructures through Collective Action: The Lessons that Olson can Teach us

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Neylon
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
Critical Parameter ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Financial Sustainability ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Real Value ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Large Groups

The infrastructures that underpin scholarship and research, including repositories, curation systems, aggregators, indexes and standards, are public goods. Finding sustainability models to support them is a challenge due to free-loading, where someone who does not contribute to the support of an infrastructure nonetheless gains the benefit of it. The work of Mancur Olson (1965) suggests that there are only three ways to address this for large groups: compelling all potential users, often through some form of taxation, to support the infrastructure; providing non-collective (club) goods to contributors that are created as a side-effect of providing the collective good; or implementing mechanisms that lower the effective number of participants in the negotiation (oligopoly).In this paper, I use Olson’s framework to analyse existing scholarly infrastructures and proposals for the sustainability of new infrastructures. This approach provides some important insights. First, it illustrates that the problems of sustainability are not merely ones of finance but of political economy, which means that focusing purely on financial sustainability in the absence of considering governance principles and community is the wrong approach. The second key insight this approach yields is that the size of the community supported by an infrastructure is a critical parameter. Sustainability models will need to change over the life cycle of an infrastructure with the growth (or decline) of the community. In both cases, identifying patterns for success and creating templates for governance and sustainability could be of significant value. Overall, this analysis demonstrates a need to consider how communities, platforms, and finances interact and suggests that a political economic analysis has real value.

Collective Action and the Fallacy of the Liberal Fallacy

1981 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kimber
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Net Benefit ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
Interested Individual

The problem of whether the rational, self-interested individual will voluntarily subscribe to a large group providing collective benefits is examined, using the perspectives of Hardin's application of game theory and Olson's application of economic theory. The arguments in each case are held to be unsatisfactory, and the same analysis cannot automatically be applied to all problems involving collective action. The subscription to large groups normally represents a distinct sub-class of problems, the solution to which, contrary to the established wisdom, is that the rational, self-interested individual with a net benefit (together, perhaps, with the irrational one with a net loss) will voluntarily subscribe to a group providing a collective good.

Group Size and Collective Action

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARUN AGRAWAL ◽  
SANJEEV GOYAL
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
Game Theoretic Model ◽  
Large Groups

This article examines the hypothesis that group size is inversely related to successful collective action. A distinctive aspect of the article is that it combines the analysis of primary data collected by the authors with a game-theoretic model. The model considers a group of people protecting a commonly owned resource from excessive exploitation. The authors view monitoring of individual actions as a collective good and focus on third-party monitoring. We argue that the costs of monitoring rise more than proportionately as group size increases. This factor along with lumpiness in the monitoring technology yields the following theoretical conclusion: Medium-sized groups are more likely than small or large groups to provide third-party monitoring. The authors find that the empirical evidence is consistent with this theoretical result.

On the Essence and Tipology of International Public Goods

2005 ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
V. Mortikov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
Club Goods ◽  
Basic Properties ◽  
International Public Goods ◽  
Regional Public Goods ◽  
Joint Products

The basic properties of international public goods are analyzed in the paper. Special attention is paid to the typology of international public goods: pure and impure, excludable and nonexcludable, club goods, regional public goods, joint products. The author argues that social construction of international public good depends on many factors, for example, government economic policy. Aggregation technologies in the supply of global public goods are examined.

The Political Economy of Debt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Menz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Debt ◽  
Credit Access ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The explosive rise in not just public, but also private debt has recently attracted more scholarly attention. This is a novel development and might expose politico-economic models of governance to instability from an angle previously underappreciated. The liberalization of credit access in the Anglo-American countries, and, somewhat later, beyond those, might be seen as liberating for some, but they also create the potential for entrapment in debt. The term ‘privatized Keynesianism’ has been proposed to suggest a systematic agenda behind the facilitated access to lending. In this chapter, the broader access to investment vehicles is also being scrutinized, although upon closer inspection any claims of mass ownership of shares turn out not to be tenable.

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