9
The literature on mass mobilization and protest endeavors to understand under what
conditions this is likely to occur. The “relative deprivation” model proposed by Ted Gurr (1970),
proposes that groups within society will be prompted to engage in political action when they
perceive their current conditions to be worse than what they think they should be. Given the
opportunity, these groups will take action to try to improve their lot. The model, as has been
pointed out by a number of critics (see Lichbach 1994b), cannot however explain why political
violence (and, more generally, collective political action) does not occur in most cases in which
populations, ethnic groups, or segments of society feel deprived, even though they seem to have
the venues to act. Perceptions of relative deprivation are much more common than large scale
popular mobilizations. As far as the Costa Rican case goes, there is little indication that feelings
of material deprivation were prevalent among most of the population at the time. Despite
economic ups-and-downs during the 1980’s and 90’s, neither poverty nor economic inequalities
significantly increased during this period.
13
Mancur Olson’s (1971) outline of the “problem of collective action” suggests that
individuals who wish to collectively pursue a public good, will in many cases unable to do so,
due to the prevalence of “free riding. He argues that, in situations in which rational individuals
wish to collectively pursue a public good, the result will often be that the members of the group
do not actually act in a way that benefits their collective interests. According to this view, an
individual will act if and only if he/she sees his/her action as being decisive to the attainment of
the public good. This applies specifically to groups in which resources among the members are
distributed fairly equally. The bigger the group, the smaller the probability that a rational
individual’s contribution will be decisive, and the smaller the probability that he/she will choose
to participate in collective action. Were this always the case, groups would never attain any
13
PENDHS 2002, p. 35
Convention