Individual Participation in Collective Racial Violence: A Rational Choice Synthesis

1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 1040-1056 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. David Mason
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Decision Calculus ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Individual Participation

Existing rational choice treatments of collective violence have consistently discounted the role of the public goods component of the individual's decision calculus about whether or not to participate in such acts. By assuming free rider effects with respect to the public goods, these theories are unable to account for the initial inception of violence or for the later nonlooting behaviors that constitute aspects of a riot and, indeed, are preconditions for the inception of looting, the only riot behavior for which these theories can offer any explanation. Five dimensions of discrimination are defined in rational choice terms and their elimination (or reduction) is defined as the creation of a public good. I use existing theories of individual contributions to the provision of public goods to demonstrate that free rider effects need not be assumed and that the inception of a riot and later nonlooting riot behaviors can best be explained as individual contributions to the provision of the public goods represented by the elimination of the several forms of discrimination.

scholarly journals Staphylococcus aureuscoagulases are exploitable yet stable public goods in clinically relevant conditions

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (50) ◽  
pp. E11771-E11779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urvish Trivedi ◽  
Jonas S. Madsen ◽  
Jake Everett ◽  
Cody Fell ◽  
Jakob Russel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Defense Mechanism ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Coagulation Cascade ◽  
The Public ◽  
Innate Defense ◽  
The Commons

Coagulation is an innate defense mechanism intended to limit blood loss and trap invading pathogens during infection. However,Staphylococcus aureushas the ability to hijack the coagulation cascade and generate clots via secretion of coagulases. Although manyS. aureushave this characteristic, some do not. The population dynamics regarding this defining trait have yet to be explored. We report here that coagulases are public goods that confer protection against antimicrobials and immune factors within a local population or community, thus promoting growth and virulence. By utilizing variants of a methicillin-resistantS. aureuswe infer that the secretion of coagulases is a cooperative trait, which is subject to exploitation by invading mutants that do not produce the public goods themselves. However, overexploitation, “tragedy of the commons,” does not occur at clinically relevant conditions. Our micrographs indicate this is due to spatial segregation and population viscosity. These findings emphasize the critical role of coagulases in a social evolution context and provide a possible explanation as to why the secretion of these public goods is maintained in mixedS. aureuscommunities.

scholarly journals Heterogeneous groups cooperate in public good problems despite normative disagreements about individual contribution levels

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasper Otten ◽  
Vincent Buskens ◽  
Wojtek Przepiorka ◽  
Naomi Ellemers
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Individual Contribution ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Homogeneous Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
Heterogeneous Groups ◽  
Good Provision ◽  
Good Individual

Abstract Norms can promote human cooperation to provide public goods. Yet, the potential of norms to promote cooperation may be limited to homogeneous groups in which all members benefit equally from the public good. Individual heterogeneity in the benefits of public good provision is commonly conjectured to bring about normative disagreements that harm cooperation. However, the role of these normative disagreements remains unclear because they are rarely directly measured or manipulated. In a laboratory experiment, we first measure participants’ views on the appropriate way to contribute to a public good with heterogeneous returns. We then use this information to sort people into groups that either agree or disagree on these views, thereby manipulating group-level disagreement on normative views. Participants subsequently make several incentivized contribution decisions in a public goods game with peer punishment. We find that although there are considerable disagreements about individual contribution levels in heterogeneous groups, these disagreements do not impede cooperation. While cooperation is maintained because low contributors are punished, participants do not use punishment to impose their normative views on others. The contribution levels at which groups cooperate strongly relate to the average normative views of these groups.

Morally Motivated Self-Regulation

2010 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 1299-1329 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P Baron
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Private Provision ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Certification Organizations

Self-regulation is the private provision of public goods and private redistribution. This paper examines the scope of self-regulation motivated by altruistic moral preferences that are reciprocal and stronger the closer are citizens in a socioeconomic distance. The focus is on the role of organizations in increasing self-regulation by mitigating free-rider problems. Social label and certification organizations can expand the scope of self-regulation but not beyond that with unconditional altruism. Enforcement organizations expand the scope of self-regulation farther, and for-profit enforcement is more aggressive than non-profit enforcement. Enforcement through social pressure imposed by NGOs also expands the scope of self-regulation. (JEL D64, H41, L51)

Rebellious Collective Action Revisited

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko ◽  
Edward N. Muller ◽  
Karl Dieter Opp
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
York City ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Public

Why does it happen that ordinary people can come to participate in rebellious collective action? In the June 1986 issue of this Review, Edward N. Muller and Karl-Dieter Opp argued a public-goods model to account for why rational citizens may become rebels. They offered empirical data drawn from samples in New York City and Hamburg, Germany in support of the public-goods model. George Kolsko takes issue with the rationale of Muller and Opp, arguing that their public-goods model is not a rational-choice explanation of rebellious collective action. In response, Muller and Opp clarify their theory and further elaborate its assumptions.

scholarly journals Walk the Talk? The Effect of Voting and Excludability in Public Goods Experiments

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Czap ◽  
Natalia V. Czap ◽  
Esmail Bonakdarian
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Public Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Other Regarding

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of voting and excludability on individual contributions to group projects. We conducted two experiments on excludable and nonexcludable public goods, which provided several important results. First, contrary to our expectations, subjects are generally contributing more to the non-excludable compared to the excludable public good. Second, participating in a vote to choose a public project per se makes no difference in contributions. However, if the project that the individual voted for also gets selected by the group, they contribute significantly more to that project. Third, empathy and locus of control are important driving forces of participation in common projects. Our results have implications on the procedural design of obtaining funding for public projects. First, the public should get involved and have a say in the determination of which project should be realized. Second, it might well pay off to attempt to develop a consensus among the population and obtain near unanimous votes, because in our experiment, subjects discriminate between the project they voted for and the project chosen by the majority. Third, the policy proposers should stress the other-regarding interest of the public good rather than just pecuniary incentives.

scholarly journals Classroom Games: Voluntary Provision of a Public Good

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A Holt ◽  
Susan K Laury
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Voluntary Provision ◽  
Good Problem

This paper describes a simple public goods game, implemented with playing cards in a classroom setup. Students choose whether to contribute to the provision of a public good in a situation where it is privately optimal not to contribute, but socially optimal to contribute fully. This exercise motivates discussion of altruism, strategies for private fund-raising, and the role of government in resolving the public good problem.

Using Neural Measures of Economic Value to Solve the Public Goods Free-Rider Problem

Science ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 326 (5952) ◽  
pp. 596-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Krajbich ◽  
C. Camerer ◽  
J. Ledyard ◽  
A. Rangel
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
The Public ◽  
Free Rider Problem

scholarly journals How “Free” is Free Riding in Civil Wars?: Violence, Insurgency, and the Collective Action Problem

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis N. Kalyvas ◽  
Matthew Adam Kocher
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
The Public ◽  
Individual Participation

That rebels face a collective action problem is one of the most widely shared assumptions in the literature on civil wars. The authors argue that the collective action paradigm can be both descriptively inaccurate and analytically misleading when it comes to civil wars. They question both pillars of the paradigm as applied to the study of civil wars, namely, the free-riding incentive generated by the public goods dimension of insurgency and the risks of individual participation in insurgent collective action. The authors argue, instead, that although insurgent collective action may entail the expectation of future collective benefits, public (rather than just private) costs tend to predominate in the short term. Moreover, the costs of nonparticipation and free riding may equal or even exceed those of participation. The authors support these claims by triangulating three types of evidence: historical evidence from counterinsurgency operations in several civil wars; data from the Vietnam War's Phoenix Program; and regional evidence from the Greek Civil War. They conclude by drawing implications for the study of civil wars.

scholarly journals Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications for Intellectual Property

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lemley
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Traditional Theory ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Future Reward ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante

The traditional theory of IP is that the prospect of future reward providesan ex ante incentive to innovate. An increasingly common justification forlonger and more powerful IP rights is ex post - that IP will be "managed"most efficiently if control is consolidated in a single owner. Thisargument is made, for example, in the prospect and rent dissipationliterature in patent law, in justifications for expansive rights ofpublicity, and in defense of the Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Takento an extreme, this argument justifies perpetual protection with no realexceptions. Those who rely on this theory take the idea of IP as "property"too seriously, and reason that since individual pieces of property areperpetually managed, IP should be too. But IP isn't just like realproperty; indeed, it gives IP owners control over what others do with theirreal property. The ex post justification is strikingly anti-market. Wewould never say today that the market for paper clips would be "efficientlymanaged" if put into the hands of a single firm. We rely on competition todo that for us. But that is exactly what the ex post theory would do.In this paper, I explore the sub rosa development of this ex post theory ofIP. I argue that the basis for continued control is the assumption that thevalue of IP rights will be dissipated if they are used too much. Thisargument is fundamentally at odds with the public goods nature ofinformation. It stems from a particular sort of myopia about privateordering, in which actions by individual private firms are presumed to beideal and the traditional role of the market in disciplining errant firmsis ignored.

scholarly journals To free ride or not to free ride? Role of patterning and feedback in the public goods game

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 84-106
Author(s):  
Ananish Chaudhuri ◽  
DeeDee Chen ◽  
Sara Graziano ◽  
Frances McIntire ◽  
Dawn Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Free Ride
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