Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox

According to the Olson paradox, larger groups may be less successful than smaller groups in furthering their interests. We address the issue in a model with three distinctive features: explicit intergroup interaction, collective prizes with a varying mix of public and private characteristics, and no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 2001-09, Vol.95 (3), p.663-672
Main Authors: Esteban, Joan, Ray, Debraj
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collective action
Community action
Cooperation
Cost functions
Credit
Free rider effect
Government (Administrative Body)
Group dynamics
Group Size
Group theory
Individual Characteristics
Interest Groups
Intergroup Relations
Lobbying
Marginal costs
Mathematical Models
Paradoxes
Political science
Politics
Price elasticity of supply
Public goods
Wisdom
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Summary:According to the Olson paradox, larger groups may be less successful than smaller groups in furthering their interests. We address the issue in a model with three distinctive features: explicit intergroup interaction, collective prizes with a varying mix of public and private characteristics, and nonlinear lobbying costs. The interplay of these features leads to new results. When the cost of lobbying has the elasticity of a quadratic function, or higher, larger groups are more effective no matter how private the prize. With smaller elasticities, a threshold degree of publicness is enough to overturn the Olson argument, and this threshold tends to zero as the elasticity approaches the value for a quadratic function. We also demonstrate that these results are true, irrespective of whether we examine group sizes over the cross-section in some given equilibrium or changes in the size of a given group over different equilibria.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055401003124