3. Obstacles to Participation and Collective Action at the Individual and Neighbourhood Level

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Neighbourhood Level ◽  
The Individual

Jewishness and jurisgenesis: On Seyla Benhabib’s Exile, Statelessness and Migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
Max Pensky
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
International Law ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Normative Commitment ◽  
Individual Person ◽  
Inherent Dignity ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Individual

The postwar era saw a remarkable transformation of international law, from a loose arrangement of agreements designed to reduce collective action problems to a normative commitment to the inherent dignity of the individual person. Seyla Benhabib’s new book shows the extent to which this transformation was a matter of deeply personal experiences. Understanding this dialectic between the personal and the universal is crucial for understanding not just the genesis of contemporary normative international law, but also its prospects for survival. This article focuses on Benhabib’s adoption of the process of jurisgenesis as an exemplary form of this dialectic, ending with a critical reading of Hannah Arendt’s attempt to contribute to this process.

Writing the Intifada Collective Action in the Occupied Territories

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian S. Lustick
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
West Bank And Gaza ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The five-year-old Palestinian uprising, the intifada, was the first of many mass mobilizations against nondemocratic rule to appear in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991. Although the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is seldom included by the media or by social scientists in their treatments of this putative wave of “democratization,” many studies of the uprising are available. Although largely atheoretic in their construction of the intifada and in their explanations for it, the two general questions posed by most of these authors are familiar to students of collective action and revolution. On the one hand, why did it take twenty years for the Palestinians to launch the uprising? On the other hand, how, in light of the individual costs of participation and the negligible impact of any one person's decision to participate, could it have occurred at all? The work under review provides broad support for recent trends in the analysis of revolution and collection action, while illustrating both the opportunities and the constraints associated with using monographic literature as a data base.

scholarly journals Equality, Democracy, and Constitution: We the People in Court

1969 ◽  
pp. 324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The People ◽  
Individual Judgment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
We The People

Commentators have seen the disabling provisions found in the American and Canadian constitutions as undemocratic because they restrict majority powers. Building upon the work of John Hart Ely, this paper puts forward a conception of democracy which nourishes both collective responsibility and individual judgment. The distinguishes between "statistical" and "communal'' conceptions of democracy. Traditional theories, such as Ely's, have relied on the statistical notion which of individuals in a democracy acting each on their own. In the communal conception, decisions are made by the ' 'people'' acting as a distinct and collective unit of responsibility. The author then elaborates on the communal conception by identifying two variations of it, ' 'integrated'' and ' 'monolithic' 'forms of collective action. In the latter, both the unit of responsibility and the unit of judgment are collective, while in the former the unit of judgment resides in the individual. If democracy is understood in the integrated communal sense, then many of the disabling provisions in the American and Canadian constitutions can be seen to democracy rather than contradict it.

Social Embeddedness and Rational Turnout

2019 ◽  
pp. 360-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Jean Uhlaner
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Relational Goods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Theoretical Developments

Models that embed people in social groups provide solutions to the paradox of voting. This chapter summarizes several approaches that use group identities and loyalties to generate substantial turnout even within rational choice models of participation (whether voting or collective action more broadly). One theoretical move introduces leaders acting instrumentally to mobilize individuals who belong to some group, thereby integrating the individual citizen’s consumption term into an instrumental calculus. Other, complementary, theoretical developments introduce relational goods, which exist only with interaction among specific people, as part of the mobilizing arsenal, or more generally develop relational motivations for collective action. The chapter briefly discusses some empirical findings, notably including experiments that show that shame, pride, and digital social networks increase turnout, and argues that these results provide support for the social embeddedness models.

Intergenerational Ethics and Individual Duties

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cripps
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Global Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Combined Actions ◽  
Individual Actions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Intergenerational Ethics ◽  
Individual Duties

This chapter defends a cooperative promotional model of individual intergenerational moral duties. The individual can feel powerless and detached in the face of intergenerational moral challenges, which generally result from the combined actions of billions of people and require global-level solutions. Two individual duties are commonly debated: to promote effective collective action and to minimize one’s own contribution to the problem, for example, by cutting one’s carbon footprint. The cooperative promotional model incorporates both possibilities, including in many cases a duty to have a small family. The argument starts by assuming a shared or “weakly collective” duty requiring the global affluent to organize to avoid severe intergenerational injustice, a claim widely defended on positive and negative grounds. On the cooperative promotional model, each individual must cooperate with motivated others as far as reasonably possible to promote fair, effective, efficient collective-level progress toward this collective end. In determining how to act, individuals must consider collective or reliably coordinated action as well as the chance of triggering significant change through adding to aggregated individual actions. The account does not automatically require “taking up the slack” for obstructive individuals and institutions—it will often mandate cooperating to increase compliance—but is complicated by the need to adjust for unwilling duty bearers.

scholarly journals The irreducibility of collective obligations

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (4) ◽  
pp. 1085-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allard Tamminga ◽  
Frank Hindriks
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Deontic Logic ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Individual Agent ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Individualists claim that collective obligations are reducible to the individual obligations of the collective’s members. Collectivists deny this. We set out to discover who is right by way of a deontic logic of collective action that models collective actions, abilities, obligations, and their interrelations. On the basis of our formal analysis, we argue that when assessing the obligations of an individual agent, we need to distinguish individual obligations from member obligations. If a collective has a collective obligation to bring about a particular state of affairs, then it might be that no individual in the collective has an individual obligation to bring about that state of affairs. What follows from a collective obligation is that each member of the collective has a member obligation to help ensure that the collective fulfills its collective obligation. In conclusion, we argue that our formal analysis supports collectivism.

Where There Is a (Collective) Will, There Are (Effective) Ways

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (12) ◽  
pp. 1678-1692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Craig McGarty ◽  
Gerhard Reese ◽  
Mariette Berndsen ◽  
Ana-Maria Bliuc
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Orientation ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Memberships ◽  
Subsequent Identification

The 21st century has borne witness to catastrophic natural and human-induced tragedies. These disasters necessitate humanitarian responses; however, the individual and collective bases of support are not well understood. Drawing on Duncan’s motivational model of collective action, we focus on how individual differences position a person to adopt group memberships and develop a “group consciousness” that provides the basis for humanitarian action. Longitudinal mediation analyses involving supporters of international humanitarian action ( N = 384) sampled annually for 3 years provided support for the hypothesized model, with some twists. The results revealed that within time point, a set of individual differences (together, the “pro-social orientation”) promoted a humanitarian group consciousness that, in turn, facilitated collective action. However, longitudinally, there was evidence that a more general pro-social orientation undermined subsequent identification with, and engagement in, the humanitarian cause. Results are discussed in terms of understanding the interplay between individual and group in collective actions.

scholarly journals How chimpanzees solve collective action problems

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1749) ◽  
pp. 4946-4954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Claire Schneider ◽  
Alicia P. Melis ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Social Tolerance ◽  
Significant Variability ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
The Individual

We presented small groups of chimpanzees with two collective action situations, in which action was necessary for reward but there was a disincentive for individuals to act owing to the possibility of free-riding on the efforts of others. We found that in simpler scenarios (experiment 1) in which group size was small, there was a positive relationship between rank and action with more dominant individuals volunteering to act more often, particularly when the reward was less dispersed. Social tolerance also seemed to mediate action whereby higher tolerance levels within a group resulted in individuals of lower ranks sometimes acting and appropriating more of the reward. In more complex scenarios, when group size was larger and cooperation was necessary (experiment 2), overcoming the problem was more challenging. There was highly significant variability in the action rates of different individuals as well as between dyads, suggesting success was more greatly influenced by the individual personalities and personal relationships present in the group.

Individualism during Crises

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Bo Bian ◽  
Jingjing Li ◽  
Ting Xu ◽  
Natasha Z. Foutz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Us Counties ◽  
The Individual ◽  
To Receive

Abstract Individualism has long been linked to economic growth. Using the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that such a culture can hamper the economy's response to crises, a period with heightened coordination frictions. Exploiting variation in US counties’ frontier experience, we show that more individualistic counties engage less in social distancing and charitable transfers, and are less willing to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The effect of individualism is stronger where social distancing has higher externality and holds at the individual level when we exploit migrants for identification. Our results suggest that individualism can exacerbate collective action problems during economic downturns.

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