How Collective Action Problems Suppress Participation in Nonprofit Trade Associations

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402110176
Author(s):  
Clifford W. Frasier
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Associations ◽  
Policy Environments ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Membership Associations

In seeking to understand how nonprofits participate in policymaking at the state level, scholars of the third sector tend to overlook or assume a barrier to this activity: collective action problems. I show that such problems suppress charter school participation in their trade associations. An analysis of original survey data and informant interviews combined with Internal Revenue Service data for the complete set of charter membership associations in the United States demonstrates that schools’ participation in these collectives follows a classic pattern of collective action problems: In states where the number of potential members is high, participation rates are lower. Across states, the size of the population of schools eligible for membership better explains variation in participation than other factors typically deemed important by scholars, such as organizational resources and policy environments. The finding supports the argument that large numbers inhibit participation in associations that pursue collective goods for their industry.

Drug Use During Pregnancy Policies in the United States From 1970 to 2016

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Thomas ◽  
Ryan Treffers ◽  
Nancy F. Berglas ◽  
Laurie Drabble ◽  
Sarah C. M. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
State Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Alcohol Policy ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Drug Laws ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Policy Environments

As U.S. states legalize marijuana and as governmental attention is paid to the “opioid crisis,” state policies pertaining to drug use during pregnancy are increasingly important. Little is known about the scope of state policies targeting drug use during pregnancy, how they have evolved, and how they compare to alcohol use during pregnancy policies. Method: Our 46-year original data set of statutes and regulations in U.S. states covers the entirety of state-level legislation in this policy domain. Data were obtained through original legal research and from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Alcohol Policy Information System. Policies were analyzed individually as well as by classification as punitive toward or supportive of women. Results: The number of states with drug use during pregnancy policies has increased from 1 in 1974 to 43 in 2016. Policies started as punitive. By the mid- to late 1980s, supportive policies emerged, and mixed policy environments dominated in the 2000s. Overall, drug/pregnancy policy environments have become less supportive over time. Comparisons of drug laws to alcohol laws show that the policy trajectories started in opposite directions, but by 2016, the results were the same: Punitive policies were more prevalent than supportive policies across states. Moreover, there is a great deal of overlap between drug use during pregnancy policies and alcohol/pregnancy policies. Conclusion: This study breaks new ground. More studies are needed that explore the effects of these policies on alcohol and other drug use by pregnant women and on birth outcomes.

International Real Estate Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-523
Author(s):  
Fukuju Yamazaki ◽  
◽  
Taisuke Sadayuki: ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Significant Cost ◽  
Price Function ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Comparative Examination

Condominium reconstruction involves a difficult collective decision-making process among owners, which prevents older condominiums from being redeveloped efficiently. This paper aims to examine whether this type of collective action cost exists for Japanese condominiums. First, we discuss in the literature review and an empirical analysis that the number of units in a condominium complex is an appropriate proxy for the collective action problem. Then, by using the rent in the price function to control for housing characteristics, we show that the number of units has a negative impact on condominium price. Furthermore, the price function for condominiums is compared with that for single-owner rental apartments that are free from the collective action problem. The estimation results show that the number of units only negatively affects the price of condominiums and that the depreciation rate for the condominium price is greater than that for single-owner apartments. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that a significant cost is associated with collective action problems in condominium reconstruction. Lastly, we conduct a comparative examination of condominiums in Japan and the United States, and the result suggests that revising the current Japanese condominium law could induce more efficient redevelopment of old condominiums.

scholarly journals A Case Study of Public Trust, Collective Action, and Water

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
John McCaskill ◽  
Julie Haworth ◽  
James Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Water Conservation ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
High Level

Public trust is a critical component in the governance of public resources. The structure of that governance can have a profound impact on the level of trust citizens have in the way resources are allocated. This study relates the findings of an exit poll conducted during the primaries for the 2016 presidential elections. The questions related to the level of trust voters had regarding their local government and their subsequent attitudes toward the water conservation messaging from those governments. The findings support national survey findings that citizens in the United States have a high level of trust in local government, which enables longer-term solutions to collective action problems.

The Geography of Inequality: How Land Use Regulation Produces Segregation

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA TROUNSTINE
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Public Goods ◽  
Land Use Regulations ◽  
Collective Action Problems

Public goods in the United States are largely funded and delivered at the local level. Local public goods are valuable, but their production requires overcoming several collective action problems including coordinating supply and minimizing congestion, free-riding, and peer effects. Land use regulations, promulgated by local governments, allow communities to solve the collective action problems inherent in the provision of local public goods and maintenance of property values. A consequence of these efforts is residential segregation between cities along racial lines. I provide evidence that more stringent land use regulations are supported by whiter communities and that they preserve racial homogeneity. First, I show that cities that were whiter than their metropolitan area in 1970 are more likely to have restrictive land use patterns in 2006. Then, relying on Federal Fair Housing Act lawsuits to generate changes in land use policy, I show that restrictive land use helps to explain metropolitan area segregation patterns over time. Finally, I draw on precinct level initiative elections from several California cities to show that whiter neighborhoods are more supportive of restricting development. These results strongly suggest that even facially race-neutral land use policies have contributed to racial segregation.

The Paradox of Resource Provision in Entrepreneurial Teams: Between Self-Interest and the Collective Enterprise

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1336-1358
Author(s):  
Tiantian Yang ◽  
Jiayi Bao ◽  
Howard Aldrich
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Entrepreneurial Teams ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Nationally Representative

Viewing entrepreneurship as a form of collective action, this paper investigates the tension between an entrepreneurial team’s reliance on collective efforts for achieving success and individual members’ tendencies to withhold their personal resources. We argue that the precarious nature of the early founding stage and the difficulty of redeploying some resources for other uses amplify the risk of early-stage resource contributions and may lead to team members withholding resources or even free riding. Two conditions may help overcome such collective action problems: adopting a formal contract to specify rewards and sanctions and encouraging reciprocal exchange among team members through the lead entrepreneur’s voluntary contributions. Analyzing a nationally representative multiwave panel study of entrepreneurial teams in the United States, we show that early-stage team members are reluctant to provide resources tailored to the business, even though such resources are critical to venture survival. We find that presigned formal contracts and founding entrepreneurs’ initial contributions make members’ contributions of such resources much more likely. Lead entrepreneurs’ voluntary contributions to their businesses, signified by their provision of resources that impose high risks on themselves but increase the viability of the business, help mitigate collective action problems within entrepreneurial teams.

scholarly journals Multilevel Environmental Governance in the European Union and United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Provost
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
Regulatory Standards ◽  
Collective Action Problems

Managing the risks of climate change partly involves setting and implementing regulatory standards that help to diminish the causes of climate change. This means setting regulatory standards that require businesses to emit fewer pollutants, most notably carbon dioxide. In large federalist systems like the United States and the European Union, this regulation is produced by a variety of institutional structures and policy instruments as well. In the United States, federal regulations often encompass stricter standards with less flexibility; these standards have direct impacts on the relevant regulated interests, but they also influence the content and structure of non-governmental regulations, such as those promulgated by NGOs or industry trade associations. This influential “shadow of hierarchy” can be witnessed in both the U.S. and E.U. However, at a more local level, businesses and governments do not solely operate within the confines of strict, hierarchical regulation. Both sets of organizations join together horizontally to form compacts and regulatory networks that are often characterized more by guidance, soft law and collaborative efforts. While such institutions can be a welcome and effective complement to stricter, hierarchical regulation, such networks require high levels of trust and goal congruence to overcome the potential collective action problems that are inherently possible in such networks. Finally, the conditions under which networks and hierarchies both develop to construct environmental regulatory policies will depend on the dynamics of the policy process as well. Under ordinary circumstances, diverging preferences and collective action problems may create the foundation for more incremental and weaker regulatory standards, whereas an environmental disaster might create a groundswell of support for strict, judicially binding legislation. In this way, policy processes affect the structure of hierarchies and networks and ultimately the shape of regulations designed to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The Effect of Business Conditions on Early Judicial Decisions Concerning Restraint of Trade

1950 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-44
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Berry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Associations ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Main Track ◽  
Business Conditions ◽  
Restraint Of Trade

It appears to legal historians that the Supreme Court of the United States must have gone off the main track in 1933 when it handed down the celebrated Appalachian Coals decision upholding a joint selling agency. Only six years before, the Court had condemned a similar collective arrangement maintained by the Trenton Potteries; and seven years later, in 1940, the Court rendered a decision in the Socony-Vacuum Oil Case that revealed an abrupt return to its generally firm attitude toward collective action on the part of business concerns. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile the 1933 Appalachian Coals decision with the 1940 Socony-Vacuum Oil decision, and, as prices rose and shortages developed during the 1940's, the judicial attitude toward restraint of trade in various forms became progressively stiffer and stiffer. A parallel shift in the climate of court opinion against trade associations can be noted in the 1920's by comparing the decisions near the beginning of the decade, when trade was lax and prices were soft, with those a few years later when prosperity was again in evidence. One might even pose the question: Do the courts follow business conditions, as they are alleged to follow the election returns?

Trade Associations Matter as Units of Selection, as Actors Within Comparative and Historical Institutional Frameworks, and as Potential Impediments to Societal Wide Collective Action

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard E. Aldrich
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Special Section ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Associations ◽  
Units Of Selection ◽  
Organization And Management ◽  
The Difference

The papers in this special section highlight three important questions in organization and management theory. First, evolutionary theorists studying organizations have an opportunity to address issues of organizations as units of selection. Trade associations focus their members’ attention on collective interests, creating shared understandings about issues and a collective identity that unifies an association and justifies calls for action by the association on the members’ behalf. Second, for scholars using historical and comparative frameworks, the study of trade associations presents an opportunity to study similar kinds of organizations in very different institutional settings. Many things that trade associations do are driven not because they are business interest associations but because they have to follow many of the same paths as other interest associations in the same institutional environment. Across nations, political systems differ substantially in the way interests can be pursued, with important contingencies including the difference between pluralist versus corporatist systems, the extent to which political institutions depend upon the information provided by interest groups, and the extent to which political institutions are actually open to lobbying. Third, trade associations represent powerful actors with the potential to undermine the pursuit of collective action for achieving public goods. For example, in the United States, to the extent that the decline of elite class cohesion and moderate business peak associations has weakened the forces of conciliation and compromise, strong trade associations may step into the void and make matters worse.

Applicability of management guidelines for surfing resources in California

Shore & Beach ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Edward Atkin ◽  
Dan Reineman ◽  
Jesse Reiblich ◽  
David Revell
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Guidelines ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Coastal Marine ◽  
Management Measures ◽  
Legal Frameworks

Surf breaks are finite, valuable, and vulnerable natural resources, that not only influence community and cultural identities, but are a source of revenue and provide a range of health benefits. Despite these values, surf breaks largely lack recognition as coastal resources and therefore the associated management measures required to maintain them. Some countries, especially those endowed with high-quality surf breaks and where the sport of surfing is accepted as mainstream, have recognized the value of surfing resources and have specific policies for their conservation. In Aotearoa New Zealand surf breaks are included within national environmental policy. Aotearoa New Zealand has recently produced Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources (MGSR), which were developed in conjunction with universities, regional authorities, not-for-profit entities, and government agencies. The MGSR provide recommendations for both consenting authorities and those wishing to undertake activities in the coastal marine area, as well as tools and techniques to aid in the management of surfing resources. While the MGSR are firmly aligned with Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural and legal frameworks, much of their content is applicable to surf breaks worldwide. In the United States, there are several national-level and state-level statutes that are generally relevant to various aspects of surfing resources, but there is no law or policy that directly addresses them. This paper describes the MGSR, considers California’s existing governance frameworks, and examines the potential benefits of adapting and expanding the MGSR in this state.

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