Abstract
Collective action refers to group action whenever two or more individuals are involved. A basic hypothesis is that “…the incentive system may be regarded as the principal variable affecting organizational behavior” (Clark and Wilson 1961, p. 130). Concerning incentive system and rational choice, we know from Mancur Olson’s seminal work The Logic of Collective Action (1965) that it does not pay an individual to provide collective goods for a group voluntarily if the individual economic gain from doing this is negative. Olson (1965) introduced the collective action problem and the free-rider concept as we know it today. Before that, groups were simply viewed as voluntary organizations. They were assumed to organize and promote their group interests almost automatically (Baumgartner and Leech 1998). This is, however, not the case due to the collective action problem according to Olson, and this is his main contribution to social science. It does not pay an individual in larger groups to act as the entrepreneur and facilitate local collective action because individual costs from doing so are typically higher than the individual benefits from acting. Nevertheless, everyday observations and empirical evidence tell us that larger groups do organize and that entrepreneurs in the form of group leaders do exist, so social incentives may play a role too in the rational choice approach.
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Svendsen, G.T. (2020). Collective Action Problem. In: Harris, P., Bitonti, A., Fleisher, C., Skorkjær Binderkrantz, A. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_34-1
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