## 1. The Logic of Collective Action




The strategic structure of the logic of collective action is that of
the *n*-*prisoner's dilemma* (Hardin 1971, 1982a). If *n*
is 2 and the two members are able to coordinate on whether they act
together, there can be no free rider unless one of the members is de
facto altruistic. As represented in Game 1, prisoner's dilemma for two
players is essentially the model of exchange (Hardin 1982b). Suppose
that, in the status quo, I have a car and you have $5000 but that both
of us would prefer to have what the other has. Of course, each of us
would rather have the holdings of both of us: both the money and the
car. The second best outcome for both of us would be for you to have my
car in exchange for my having your money. The status quo is a worse
state of affairs for both of us than that in which we succeed in
exchanging. In the matrix, the outcomes are ordinally ranked from best
(1) to worst (4) for each player. For example, the outcome (upper right
cell) in which you yield the money and I keep the car is worst (4) for
you as the Row player and best (1) for me as the Column player.





|  |  |
| --- | --- |
|  | **Column** |
| *Yield car* | *Keep car* |
| **Row** | *Yield $5000* | 2, 2 | 4, 1 |
| *Keep $5000* | 1, 4 | 3, 3 |


Game 1: Prisoner's Dilemma or Exchange





As an *n*-prisoner's dilemma for *n* [?] 2,
collective action is therefore essentially large-number exchange. Each
of us exchanges a bit of effort or resources in return for benefiting
from some collective provision. The signal difference is that I can
cheat in the large-number exchange by free riding on the contributions
of others, whereas such cheating in the two-person case would commonly
be illegal, because it would require my taking from you without giving
you something you prefer in return.




In some collective provisions, each contribution makes the overall
provision larger; in some, there is a tipping point at which one or a
few more contributions secure the provision--as is true, for example,
in elections, in which a difference of two more votes out of a very
large number can change defeat into victory. Even in the latter case,
however, the expected value of each voter's contribution is the same ex
ante; there is no particular voter whose vote tips the outcome. Let us,
however, neglect the tipping cases and consider only those cases in
which provision is, if not an exactly linear function of the number of
individual contributions or of the amount of resources contributed, at
least a generally increasing function and not a tipping or step
function at any point. In such cases, if *n* is very large and you do not
contribute to our collective effort, the rest of us might still benefit
from providing our collective good, so that you benefit without
contributing. You are then a free rider on the efforts of the rest of
us.




Unfortunately, each and every one of us might have a positive
incentive to try to free ride on the efforts of others. My
contribution--say, an hour's work or a hundred
dollars--might add substantially to the overall provision. But my
personal share of the increase from my own contribution alone might be
vanishingly small. In any case of interest, it is true that my benefit
from having all of us, including myself, contribute is far greater
than the status quo benefit of having no one contribute. Still, my
benefit from my own contribution may be negligible. Therefore I and
possibly every one of us have incentive not to contribute and to free
ride on the contributions of others. If we all attempt to free ride,
however, there is no provision and no 'ride.'




The scope for free riding can be enormous. Suppose our large group
would benefit from providing ourselves some good at cost to each of us.
It is likely to be true that some subgroup, perhaps much smaller than
the whole group, would already benefit if even only its own members
contribute toward the larger group's good. Suppose this is true for *k*
[?] *n*. This *k*-subgroup now faces its own collective action
problem, one that is perhaps complicated by the sense that the large
number of free riders are getting away with something unfairly. If one
person in an exchange tried to free ride, the other person would most
likely refuse to go along and the attempted free ride would fail. But if
*n* [?] *k* members of our group attempt to free ride,
the rest of us cannot punish the free riders by refusing to go along
without harming our own interests.


### 1.1 History




The free rider problem and the logic of collective action have been
recognized in specific contexts for millennia. Arguably, Glaucon in
Plato's *Republic* (bk. 2, 360b-c) sees the logic in his
argument against obedience to the law if only one can escape sanction
for violations. First-time readers of Plato are often astonished that
dear old Socrates seems not to get the logic but insists that it is our
interest to obey the law independently of the incentive of its
sanctions.




Adam Smith's argument for the invisible hand that keeps sellers
competitive rather than in collusion is a fundamentally important and
benign--indeed, beneficial--instance of the logic of collective
action. He says that each producer "intends only his own gain,
and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to
promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the
worse for the society that it was no part of [the individual's intended
end]. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of
society more effectually than when he really intends to promote
it" (Smith [1776] 1976, bk. 4, chap. 2, p. 456). The back of the
invisible hand swats down efforts at price collusion, thereby pushing
producers to be innovative.




David Hume grasps the generality of the problem clearly. He
says:



> Two neighbours may agree to drain a meadow, which they
> possess in common; because 'tis easy for them to know each other's
> mind; and each must perceive, that the immediate consequence of his
> failing in his part, is, the abandoning the whole project. But 'tis
> very difficult, and indeed impossible, that a thousand persons shou'd
> agree in any such action; it being difficult for them to concert so
> complicated a design, and still more difficult for them to execute it;
> while each seeks a pretext to free himself of the trouble and expence,
> and wou'd lay the whole burden on others. (Hume [1739-40] 1978, bk. 3,
> part 2, sect. 8, p. 538).




John Stuart Mill ([1848] 1965, book 5, chap. 11, sect. 12) expresses
the logic very clearly in his defense of laws to require maximum hours
of work. He supposes that all workers would be better off if the
workday were reduced from, say ten to nine hours a day for all, but
that every individual worker would be better off working the extra hour
if most others do not. The only way for them to benefit from the
shorter workday, therefore, would be to make it illegal to work longer
than nine hours a day.




Vilfredo Pareto stated the logic fully and for the general case:



> If *all* individuals refrained from doing A, every
> individual as a member of the community would derive a certain
> advantage. But now if all individuals less *one* continue
> refraining from doing A, the community loss is very slight, whereas the
> one individual doing A makes a personal gain far greater than the loss
> that he incurs as a member of the community. (Pareto 1935, vol. 3,
> sect. 1496, pp. 946-7)




Pareto's argument is framed for the negative case, such as the
example of pollution above, but it fits positive provisions as well.
Unfortunately, his argument is buried in a large four-volume magnum
opus that is a rambling discussion of many and varied topics, and it
seems to have had little or no influence on further discussion.




Finally, the logic of collective action has long been generalized in
a loose way in the notion of the free rider problem. And it is captured
in the popular slogan, "Let George do it," in which George
typically stands in for the rest of the world.




Despite such frequent and widespread recognition of the logic, it
was finally generalized analytically by Mancur Olson only in 1965 in
his *Logic of Collective Action*. The odd mismatch of individual
incentives and what may loosely be called collective interests is the
independent discovery of two game theorists who invented the prisoner's
dilemma for two persons (see Hardin 1982a, 24-5) and of various
philosophers and social theorists who have noted the logic of
collective action in various contexts. In Olson's account, what had
been a fairly minor issue for economists became a central issue for
political scientists and social theorists more generally. From early in
the twentieth century, a common view of collective action in pluralist
group politics was that policy on any issue must be, roughly, a vector
sum of the forces of all of the groups interested in the issue (Bentley
1908). In this standard vision, one could simply count the number of
those interested in an issue, weight them by their intensity and the
direction they want policy to take, and sum the result geometrically to
say what the policy must be. Olson's analysis abruptly ended this long
tradition; and group theory in politics took on, as the central task,
trying to understand why some groups organize and others do not.




Among the major casualties of Olson's revision of our views of groups
is Karl Marx's analysis of class conflict. Although many scholars
still elaborate and defend Marx's vision, others now reject it as
failing to recognize the contrary incentives that members of the
working class face. (Oddly, Marx himself arguably saw the
cross-cutting--individual vs. group--incentives of
capitalists, the other major group in his account.) This problem had
long been recognized in the thesis of the embourgeoisement of the
working class: Once workers prosper enough to buy homes and to benefit
in other ways from the current level of economic development, they may
have so much to lose from revolutionary class action that they cease
to be potential revolutionaries.




In essence, the theories that Olson's argument demolished were all
grounded in a fallacy of composition. We commit this fallacy whenever
we suppose the characteristics of a group or set are the
characteristics of the members of the group or set or vice versa. In
the theories that fail Olson's test the fact that it would be in the
collective interest of some group to have a particular result, even
counting the costs of providing the result, is turned into the
assumption that it would be in the interest of each individual in the
group to bear the individual costs of contributing to the group's
collective provision. If the group has an interest in contributing to
provision of its good, then individual members are (sometimes wrongly)
assumed to have an interest in contributing. Sometimes, this assumption
is merely shorthand for the recognition that all the members of a group
are of the same mind on some issue. For example, a group of anti-war
marchers are of one mind with respect to the issue that gets them
marching. There might be many who are along for the entertainment, to
join a friend or spouse, or even to spy on the marchers, but the modal
motivation of the individuals in the group might well be the motivation
summarily attributed to the group. But very often the move from
individual to group intentions or vice versa is wrong.




This fallacious move between individual and group motivations and
interests pervades and vitiates much of social theory since at least
Aristotle's opening sentence in the *Politics*. He says,



> We see that every city-state is a community of some sort,
> and that every community is established for the sake of some good (for
> everyone performs every action for the sake of what he takes to be
> good). (Aristotle *Politics*, book 1, chap. 1, p.
> 1)




Even if we grant his parenthetical characterization of individual
reasons for action, it does not follow that the collective creation of
a city-state is grounded in the same motivations, or in any collective
motivation at all. Most likely, any actual city-state is the product in
large part of unintended consequences.




Argument from the fallacy of composition seems to be very appealing
even though completely wrong. Systematically rejecting the fallacy of
composition in social theory, perhaps especially in normative theory,
has required several centuries, and invocation of the fallacy is still
pervasive.


## 2. Public Goods




Olson based his analysis on Paul Samuelson's theory of public goods.
Samuelson (1954) noted that some goods, once they are made available to
one person, can be consumed by others at no additional marginal cost;
this condition is commonly called jointness of supply or nonrivalness
of consumption, because your consumption of the good does not affect
mine, as your eating a lovely dinner would block my eating it.
Therefore, in standard price theory, in which price tends to equate to
marginal cost, such goods should have a zero price. But if they are
priced at zero, they will generally not be provided. In essence, price
theory commends free riding on the provision of such goods. This might
sound like merely a cute logical problem; but standard examples include
radio broadcasts, national defense, and clean air. If any of these is
provided for anyone, they are de facto provided for everyone in the
relevant area or group.




There is a second feature of Samuelson's public goods that would
make them problematic in practice: the impossibility of exclusion. Once
supplied at all, it is supposedly impossible to exclude anyone from the
consumption of a public good. It is often noted that this feature is
analytically interesting but empirically often beside the point. States
often forcibly exclude people from enjoying such public goods as radio
broadcasts. Others can be provided through the use of various devices
that enable providers to charge the beneficiaries and to exclude those
who do not pay, as for example, by advertising that imposes a cost on
television viewers or the use of cable rather than broadcasting over
the air to provide television programming at a substantial price.
Exclusion is merely a problem of technology, not of logic. With present
technology, however, it may be too expensive to exclude many people and
we may therefore want the state to provide many goods so that we can
avoid the costs of exclusion.




There are some compelling cases of goods that are both joint in
supply and nonexcludable. National defense that protects cities against
attack from abroad, for example, is for all practical purposes a good
with both these features. But the full logic of public goods is of
little practical interest for many important contexts. Indeed, what are
often practically and politically interesting are goods that are in
fact provided collectively, independently of whether they have either
of the defining features of public goods. We can even provide purely
private consumptions through collective choice. For example, most
welfare programs transfer ordinary private consumption goods or
resources for obtaining these. Although technically these are not
public goods in Samuelson's sense, we can refer to them as collective
goods and we can treat provision of them as essentially problems of
collective action.




Olson notes that very many politically provided goods, such as
highways and public safety, roughly have the qualities of Samuelson's
public goods and therefore face the problem of free riding that
undercuts supply of the goods. Note that the supply of such goods by
the state overcomes the free rider problem because voters can vote on
whether everyone is required to pay toward the provision, as in the
case of national defense. If I am voting whether the good is to be
provided, I cannot free ride and I need not worry that anyone else can
either. We can all vote our overall preferences between supply at the
relevant individual cost versus no supply and no cost of provision, so
that democratic choice turns our problem into a simple
coordination--if we are all in agreement that a relevant good
should be collectively provided.




From the analysis of the de facto logic of collective action that
would block the spontaneous provision of many fundamentally important
classes of collective goods we can go on to argue for what is now often
called the public-goods theory of the state (Baumol 1952, 90-93; more
generally see Hardin 1997). The public-goods account gives us a clear
normative justification of the state in welfarist terms: The state
resolves many centrally important and potentially pervasive free rider
problems. It does not give us an explanatory account of the origins of
the state, although it could arguably contribute to the explanation of
the maintenance of a state once it exists. It might do so through
support for the state's collective provisions and, therefore, support
for the state. Unfortunately, as libertarians are quick to note, giving
the state power to resolve certain free rider problems also gives it the
power to do many other things that could not be justified with similar
normative arguments.


## 3. Self-Interest Theory




The modern view of the fallacy of composition in social choice is a
product of the understanding of politics as self-interested. That
understanding begins partially with Niccolo Machiavelli, who
advised the prince to act from his own self-interest. A century later,
Hobbes did not bother to advise acting from self-interest because he
supposed virtually everyone naturally does so. From that assumption, he
went on to give us the first modern political theory of the state, an
explanatory political theory that is not merely a handbook for the
prince and that is not grounded in normative assumptions of religious
commitment. To some extent, therefore, one could credit Hobbes with the
invention of social science and of explanatory, as opposed to
hortatory, political theory.




Hobbes's argument for the state is an argument from mutual
advantage. We all benefit if there is a powerful state in place to
regulate behavior, thereby enabling us to invest efforts in producing
things to make our lives better and to enable us to exchange with each
other without fear that others will wreck our efforts. Some scholars
see this resolution as a matter of mutual cooperation in a grand
prisoner's dilemma. This is strategically or game theoretically wrong
because putting a state in place is a matter of coordination on one or
another sovereign, not a matter of exchange among us or between us and
the sovereign. Once that state is in place, it might be true that I
would rather free ride on the better behavior of my fellow citizens, who
are generally law-abiding. But I generally cannot succeed in doing so,
because there is police power to coerce me if necessary.




What I cannot free ride on is the creation of a state. I want the
state, just as everyone who sees it as mutually advantageous wants it.
Suppose that somehow, perhaps using the ring of Gyges to make me
invisible as Glaucon proposed, I could get away with theft or other
crimes. Even then, I would still want the state to have the power to
coerce people into order because if they are not orderly, they will
produce nothing for me to steal. If it is true, as Hobbes supposes,
that having a state is mutually advantageous, it follows that we all
want it; and none of us can free ride on *whether* there is a
state. Either there is one or there is not, and if there is one, then I
am potentially subject to its powers of legal coercion. On balance, I
would want there to be an effective state for the protections it gives
me against others despite its potential for coercing me into good
behavior.




When we vote on a policy, as discussed above, we de facto change our
problem from a collective-action prisoner's dilemma into a simple
coordination problem by ruling out individual idiosyncrasies in our
choices. We have only collective choice: provision for all or provision
for none. Although the state is itself not the resolution of a giant
prisoner's dilemma or collective action, as is sometimes supposed, it
can be used to resolve prisoner's dilemma interactions. Suppose you and
I both want cleaner air but that each of us would free ride on the
efforts of others to clean the air. State policy can block free riding,
if necessary at metaphorical gunpoint. We both prefer the general
effort to provide cleaner air and we both pay our share toward the cost
of providing it.


## 4. Explaining Collective Action




The facts that there is a lot of collective action even in many
large-number contexts in which the individuals do not have rich
relationships with each other and that, therefore, many people are not
free riding in relevant contexts suggest at least three possibilities.
First, there are ways to affect the incentives of group members to make
it their interest to contribute. Second, motivations other than
self-interest may be in play. Third, the actors in the seemingly
successful collective actions fail to understand their own interests.
Each of these possibilities is important and interesting, and the
latter two are philosophically interesting. Each is also supported by
extensive empirical evidence.




In the first category are the *by-product theory* proposed by
Olson and the possibility that *political entrepreneurs*, at
least partially acting in their own interest, can engineer provisions.
In the by-product theory, I might contribute to my group's effort
because the group ties my contribution to provision of some private
good that I want, such as participation in the Sierra Club's outdoor
activities or, in the early days of unions, low-cost group-insurance
benefits not available in the market. Such private goods can commonly
be provided in the market, so that their usefulness may eventually be
undercut. Indeed, firms that provide insurance benefits to their
employees thereby undercut one of the appeals of union membership. The
general decline of American unions in recent decades is partially the
result of their success in resolving problems for workers in ways that
do not require continuing union effort.




When collective goods can be supplied by government or some other
agency, political entrepreneurs might organize the provision. For
example, Senator Howard Metzenbaum worked to get legislation on behalf
of the poor and of unions, although he was certainly not poor and was
not himself a working member of a union. Yet he benefited from his
efforts in support of these groups if they voted to keep him in office.
Because there is government, collective action of many kinds is far
more likely than we might expect from the dismal logic of collective
action.




Turn now to the assumption of self-interest. In generalizing from
the motive of self-interest to the explanation and even justification
of actions and institutions, Hobbes wished to reduce political theory
to an analog of geometry or physics, so that it would be a deductive
science. All of the statements of the logic of collective action above
are grounded in an assumption of the self-interested incentives of the
actors. When the number of members of a group that would benefit from
collective action is small enough, we might expect cooperation that
results from extensive interaction, mutual monitoring, and even
commitments to each other that trump or block narrowly self-interested
actions. But when the group is very large, free riding is often clearly
in the interest of most and perhaps all members.




Against the assumption of purely self-interested behavior, we know
that there are many active, more or less well funded groups that seek
collective results that serve interests other than those of their own
members. For a trivial example, none of the hundreds of people who
have been members of the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment
is likely to have had a personal stake in whether there is a death
penalty (Schattschneider 1960, 26). In our time, thousands of people
are evidently willing to die for their causes (and not simply to risk
dying--we already do that when we merely drive to a restaurant
for dinner). Perhaps some of these people act from a belief that they
will receive an eternal reward for their actions, so that their
actions are consistent with their interests.




Finally turn to the possible role of misunderstanding in leading
people to act for collective provisions. Despite the fact that people
regularly grasp the incentive to free ride on the efforts of others in
many contexts, it is also true that the logic of collective action is
hard to grasp in the abstract. The cursory history above suggests just
how hard it was to come to a general understanding of the problem.
Today, there are thousands of social scientists and philosophers who do
understand it and maybe far more who still do not. But in the general
population, few people grasp it. Those who teach these issues regularly
discover that some students insist that the logic is wrong, that it is,
for example, in the interest of workers to pay dues voluntarily to
unions or that it is in one's interest to vote. If the latter is true,
then about half of voting-age Americans evidently act against their own
interests every quadrennial election year. It would be extremely
difficult to assess how large is the role of misunderstanding in the
reasons for action in general because those who do not understand the
issues cannot usefully be asked whether they do understand. But the
evidence of misunderstanding and ignorance is extensive (Hardin
2002).


## 5. Democracy




The logic of collective action has become one of the richest areas
of research and theory in rational choice theory in the social sciences
and philosophy. Much of that literature focuses on the explanation of
varied social actions and outcomes, including spontaneous actions,
social norms, and large institutions. One of its main areas is efforts
to explain behavior in elections. In general, voting seems clearly to
be a case of collective action for the mutual benefit of all those who
support a particular candidate or whose interests would be furthered by
that candidate's election. If voting entails costs to individuals
whereas the benefit from voting is essentially a collective benefit
only very weakly dependent on any individual's vote, individuals may
find it in their interest not to vote (Downs 1957). When the number of
voters on one side of an election is in the tens of millions, no
individual's vote is likely to matter at all. Even though it is not
narrowly in their own individual interest to do so if there are any
costs to be borne in going to the polls to vote and in learning enough
about various candidates to know which ones would further a voter's
interests, millions of people vote. This is one of the most notorious
failures of the rational choice literature. A standard response to the
phenomenon of massive voting is to note how cheap the action is and how
much public effort is expended in exhorting citizens to vote. But it
seems likely that much of the voting we see is normatively
motivated.




Both the voting that does happen and the non-voting or free riding
that accompanies it as well as the level of ignorance of voters call
simple normative theories or views of democracy into question.
"The will of the people" is a notoriously hallowed phrase
that is vitiated by logical fallacy and that is generally meaningless
as a supposed characterization of democracy, in which decisions are
majoritarian and not unanimous (Kant [1796] 1970, 101; Maitland [1875]
2000, 101-112). It might on rare occasion be true that the people are
in virtually unanimous agreement on some important policy so that they
share the same will on that issue. But generally, there is a diversity
of views and even deep conflict over significant policies in modern
pluralist democracies. In large societies, democracy is invariably
representative democracy except on issues that are put to direct
popular vote in referendums. Even this term,
"representative," is gutted by logical fallacy. My
representative on some governmental body is apt to work on behalf of my
interests some of the time and against them some of the time. Even
those for whom I vote often work against my interests; and if they
should be said to represent me, they often do a very bad job of it.




Note that, as mentioned earlier, the election of a candidate is a good
whose provision is a step function of the number of votes. If there
are *n* votes cast, then half of *n* [?] 1 votes spells defeat
and half of *n* + 1 spells victory. If, as Mayor Daley did with
the Chicago votes in the US presidential election of 1960, I could
withhold my vote until all others have been counted, my vote might
actually tip the result to victory for my candidate. In actual fact,
the typical voter casts a vote in a state of ignorance about the final
count. I might readily expect the margin to be very large or I might
expect it to be very narrow. But I am unlikely to expect it to be
tied, so that my own vote would be decisive. Hence, although the
actual provision is a step function, my vote or my free riding must be
based on some sense of the expected effect of my vote, and that must
generally be minuscule for any election in a large electorate. With
extremely high probability, my vote is likely to have no effect.


## 6. Free Riding and Morality




The fact that people do organize for collective purposes is often
taken to imply the normative goodness of what they seek. If the
by-product theory is correct, however, this conclusion is called into
question. For example, we might join a union merely to obtain insurance
at the inexpensive group rate even though we vote against all its
strike proposals, would never join a picket line, and might even be
hostile to the idea of unions. Or we might go to a political
demonstration for varied reasons other than agreement with the
ostensible object of the demonstration; for example pro-war proponents
might join in a peace march on a glorious day to hear performances by
outstanding singers in a large public park--something they might
happily have paid to do.




It is also widely held that there are circumstances in which free riding on the provision of a collective good is morally wrong, because *unfair*. The two most prominent attempts to describe the conditions under which this kind of wrongness occurs are H.L.A. Hart's principle of "mutuality of restrictions":



> when a number of persons conduct any joint enterprise according to rules and thus restrict their liberty, those who have submitted to these restrictions when required have a right to a similar submission from those who have benefited by their submission. (Hart 1955, 185)




and John Rawls's "principle of fairness":



> a person is required to do his part as defined by the rules of an institution when two conditions are met: first, the institution is just (or fair), that is, it satisfies the two principles of justice; and second, one has voluntarily accepted the benefits of the arrangement or taken advantage of the opportunities it offers to further one's interests. (Rawls [1971] 1999, 96)




Hart (1955, 185) calls his formulation a "bare schematic outline" of the obligation one owes to other cooperators; and subsequent discussion has focused on examining what is required in order to make this outline fully accurate. As it stands, Hart's principle invites the kinds of objections emphasized by Robert Nozick (1974, 90-95): I am not morally required to pay for books that are thrown into my house with bills attached, or to take a day off work to entertain the neighbourhood over a public address system after my neighbours have taken it in turns to do so. Rawls's formulation, which restricts the obligation to cases in which a benefit has been *voluntarily accepted*, avoids these objections. However, some writers argue that this is too tight a restriction (Arneson 1982; Cullity 1995; Trifan 2000): they maintain that when others are cooperating to produce a good that is *compulsory*, in the sense that once it is produced one cannot avoid receiving it (without excessive cost), one can still have an obligation of fairness to share the costs of producing it. If that is true, it keeps open the prospect (embraced by Hart but not Rawls) that political obligations can be grounded in an anti-free riding principle (Klosko 1992, 2005; Wolff 1995). However, the project of grounding political obligations in this way faces several significant obstacles. These include the objections that the operation of the *state* does not qualify as the kind of cooperative scheme to which a principle of fair contribution properly applies; that some citizens are sufficiently self-reliant that they do not receive a net benefit from the state; that grounding an obligation of fairness to contribute towards the cost of producing a collective good falls short of justifying the use of *coercion* to compel the contribution; and that an obligation to contribute to the production of a collective good does not apply when the question of which goods a group should be producing is itself contested.




One commonly claimed obligation of political participation is an obligation to vote. Support for this is sometimes attempted by appealing to a loose generalization argument that asks, "What if everybody failed to vote?" or, in the language here, "What if
everybody chose to free ride on the voting of others?" The
practical answer to that question, of course, is that everybody does
not choose to free ride, only some do, and that it is exceedingly
unlikely that everyone will choose to do so. But if I think almost no
one else will vote, I should probably conclude that it is therefore
then in my interest to vote (that day has yet to come). Perhaps there
is some number of citizens, k, such that, if fewer than k citizens
vote, democracy will fail. If so, half of all citizens seems likely to
be a number significantly greater than k. Local elections in the US
often turn out far less than half the eligible citizens and
presidential elections turn out a bit more than half. One may question
just what kind of democracy the US has, but it seems in some
significant ways to work.




The generalization argument here is a variant of the fallacy of
composition and it is logically specious in its presumed implication.
Yet many people assert such an argument in collective action contexts,
and they may very well be motivated by the apparent moral authority of
the argument. An alternative question here would be something like:
"What if everybody failed to take into account the effect of
their own vote on the election?" The answer is that roughly half
of Americans may well fail to take into account the effect of their own
votes on elections, and they vote. The rest ride free.