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Narrative and Collective Action: The Power of Public Stories
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consumers for example, who face a collective action problem in mobilizing in pursuit of
their interests, relative to concentrated special interests on the other, such as a domestic manufacturer, which does face a collective action obstacle to pushing for protection.
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An
extreme form of this asymmetry arises in social movements, which typically involve a very large number of participants and a high cost of participating (compared, say, to
voting).
The problem of cooperation presented by collective goods need not always have the structure of a prisoner’s dilemma. As Skyrms has argued, many situations are perhaps
better modeled as a “stag hunt.”
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In a stag hunt, if all cooperate, all receive the best
outcome. If, however, another defects, it becomes better to defect oneself. Cooperating
when (some number of) others defect is the worst outcome for a competitor. Solving the stag hunt game is a matter of assurance (which is why the game is sometimes referred to
as an “assurance game”). If either party can be assured that the other intends to cooperate, both will cooperate.
Coordinating Collective Action
In these highly stylized games, there is only one way to cooperate, but in many
circumstances there may be more than one cooperative solution. Far from making cooperation easier, having many possibilities for cooperation complicates matters by
introducing a problem of coordination. To take a simple example, if two friends want to meet for dinner and there is more than one restaurant in town, they need to coordinate on
where to meet. If both arrive at the same place, both win; otherwise they both lose. In political action, of course, there are almost always many ways to achieve a collective
goal.
For many coordination games, the problem is solved by convention. A convention is a previously agreed upon behavior that allows parties to anticipate the choices of others
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Schattschneider, 1935.
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The name refers to a story in Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality: “If it was a matter of hunting a deer,
everyone well realized that he must remain faithful to his post; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, we cannot doubt that he would have gone off of pursuit of it without a scruple.” quoted in Skryms, 2004, p. 1.
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| | Authors: Mayer, Frederick. |
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consumers for example, who face a collective action problem in mobilizing in pursuit of
their interests, relative to concentrated special interests on the other, such as a domestic
manufacturer, which does face a collective action obstacle to pushing for protection.
extreme form of this asymmetry arises in social movements, which typically involve a
very large number of participants and a high cost of participating (compared, say, to
voting).
The problem of cooperation presented by collective goods need not always have the
structure of a prisoner’s dilemma. As Skyrms has argued, many situations are perhaps
better modeled as a “stag hunt.”
In a stag hunt, if all cooperate, all receive the best
outcome. If, however, another defects, it becomes better to defect oneself. Cooperating
when (some number of) others defect is the worst outcome for a competitor. Solving the
stag hunt game is a matter of assurance (which is why the game is sometimes referred to
as an “assurance game”). If either party can be assured that the other intends to
cooperate, both will cooperate.
Coordinating Collective Action
In these highly stylized games, there is only one way to cooperate, but in many
circumstances there may be more than one cooperative solution. Far from making
cooperation easier, having many possibilities for cooperation complicates matters by
introducing a problem of coordination. To take a simple example, if two friends want to
meet for dinner and there is more than one restaurant in town, they need to coordinate on
where to meet. If both arrive at the same place, both win; otherwise they both lose. In
political action, of course, there are almost always many ways to achieve a collective
goal.
For many coordination games, the problem is solved by convention. A convention is a
previously agreed upon behavior that allows parties to anticipate the choices of others
5
Schattschneider, 1935.
6
The name refers to a story in Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality: “If it was a matter of hunting a deer,
everyone well realized that he must remain faithful to his post; but if a hare happened to pass within reach
of one of them, we cannot doubt that he would have gone off of pursuit of it without a scruple.” quoted in
Skryms, 2004, p. 1.
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