Ch.5 | dilemma of collective action: who organizes, who doesn't & why?

Question 1

collective good

Answer 1

Public commodities that, if available to one member of a group, must be available to all members of that group

Question 2

compulsion

Answer 2

The exercise of power and hierarchy to shift the incentives of individuals to contribute to the group effort, thus essentially transforming a voluntary exchange into a nonvoluntary exchange of resources in order to obtain a collective good

Question 3

divisibility

Answer 3

The interaction of group size with the total amount of a collective good; an individual’s willingness to contribute may lessen if the benefit of the collective good decreases with its consumption by an increasing number of group members

Question 4

entrepreneurs

Answer 4

People who help to generate collective goods when they act in their private interest

Question 5

free riding

Answer 5

a

Question 6

jointness of supply

Answer 6

The characteristic that one person’s consumption of a collective good does not restrict its consumption by other members of the group

Question 7

nonexcludability

Answer 7

A characteristic of collective goods indicat­ing that every member of the group must have access to the good regardless of her contribution to the collective effort; examples can be positive, such as military protection, or negative, such as pollution

Question 8

piggybacking

Answer 8

A mechanism for the provision of collective goods by which established organizations use the organizational structures they have developed to advance specific issues to add new concerns and interests to their agenda

Question 9

selective incentive

Answer 9

An additional benefit beyond the collective good provided to latent group members in order to change their cost-benefit calculation and induce cooperation in the provision of the collective good