Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Collective action: Collective action involves coordinated efforts by a group of individuals or organizations to achieve a common goal or address a shared issue. See also Cooperation, Group behavior, Goals._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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James M. Buchanan on Collective Action - Dictionary of Arguments
Boudreaux I 73 Collective action/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: „Collective action is viewed as the action of individuals when they choose to accomplish purposes collectively, rather than individually, and the government is seen as nothing more than the set of processes, the machine, which allows such collective action to take place.“(1) Individuals engage in market exchange because it is mutually advantageous for them to do so. (…) individuals often work together through collective organizations to carry out those mutually advantageous activities. Some organizations, such as clubs and firms, are voluntary, but other kinds of collective action are taken through government. >Clubs, >Organizations, >Utility, >Government, >Politics. Government/Buchanan: When government is used ideally, people exchange with each other politically in order to accomplish ends that they could not accomplish individually or through market exchange. >Market/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 74 Government consists of a set of institutions that, if well-designed, enable large numbers of individuals to engage in exchange collectively for their mutual benefit. In Buchanan’s division of government activities into the protective state and the productive state, it is the productive state that best embodies his idea of politics as exchange. One hopes that the activities of the protective state meet with the approval of each and every one of the state’s citizens. State/Hobbes/Buchanan: Buchanan shared Thomas Hobbes’s view that without the protective state, life would be a war of all against all. To create the protective state, individuals agree only to not violate each other’s rights, with the state enlisted to enforce this agreement. The productive state does more than the protective state. As Buchanan envisioned it, the productive state arises from an agreement among citizens to pool their resources to collectively produce goods and services that would be difficult to produce individually or through standard market activity. In the real world, people have not agreed to the activities of the state. Under what conditions could people be depicted as being in agreement with institutions to which they have not actually agreed? Solution/Buchanan: Buchanan extended the market-exchange logic - one in which all parties to an exchange voluntarily agree to it - to collective activity y. The activities of the state would benefit everyone if everyone agreed to them. Boudreaux I 75 It follows that the voting rule that would make political exchange fully analogous to market exchange is unanimity. Despite the widespread tendency to view the ideal of democracy as embodied in simple majority-rule voting, Buchanan understood majority rule as being just one of many possible and justifiable political decision-making rules. >Voting/Buchanan. Individualism: Buchanan’s insistence that all political activity ultimately be grounded in unanimous consent follows from his individualistic approach. >Individualism/Buchanan. 1. Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock (1962/1999). The Calculus of Consent. Liberty Fund._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 Boudreaux II Donald J. Boudreaux The Essential Hayek Vancouver: Fraser Institute 2014 |
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