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Collective Action Catch-22
Charles Dobson
Extracted from: The Troublemaker's Teaparty: A Manual for Effective Citizen Action 2003
January 29, 2008

Dennis Chong begins his award-winning book Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement with an important question. What determines whether rational individuals will participate in public-spirited collective action? To answer this question he turns to game theory. In particular, Chong argues that collective action faces a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma problem. When it comes to acquiring a public good, rational people will decline to participate, preferring instead a "free ride," since they will be able to obtain the public good whether they participate or not. But this is ultimately unworkable. The collective result of everyone not participating is complete failure.

To get around the problem, Chong rightly argues that people must be given some incentive to participate beyond the public good itself. When social and psychological factors are brought into play the prisoner's dilemma game turn into assurance game, where people find it in their interests to participate if others do so as well. Thus:

• People participate out of a sense of obligation to friends, family, and associates. They also respond to a sense of decency and fair play and a desire to avoid damaging their reputation if they appear unwilling to help.
• People participate if there is evidence of success, so leaders should aim for a series of small victories over the short term rather than focus on the big victory down the road. Even symbolic victories are important. To help followers weather early storms and lack of success, leaders should frame the smallest success as a victory. They should cheer any hint the opposition is giving in to demands. In the absence of evidence, movement leaders must convince potential followers that, despite appearances, those in power are pliable and will eventually give in to political pressure. For their part, those in power will try to stonewall activists to deny them the victories that will breathe life into their movement. The result of these strategies is a contest of wills in which each side tries to outlast the other.
• People are more likely to participate if there is evidence of lots of other people participating. This presents social movement groups with catch-22. They can only succeed if many people participate, but people will finally participate if they see evidence of success and participation of others.

Overcoming the catch-22 requires a small band of leaders and unconditional supporters.

Chong writes:

Leaders become involved irrespective of the degree of success and the level of mobilization previously established by the movement. Followers, on the other hand, join collective action only in response to success and the existing levels of mobilization. In other words, leaders act autonomously, while followers jump on the bandwagon, as well as respond to the contagion of the movement.

Overcoming the catch-22 also depends on creating the impression that others are joining in the effort. Those on the other side, of course, try to create the opposite impression.

Rising expectations also boost participation. The great English, American, French, and Russian revolutions took place when the material conditions of life were actually improving. Movement leaders can take advantage of this by holding up an enviable standard as something everyone should rightfully enjoy.

Finally, a mobilizing frame encourages participation. It's not so much the facts of economic deprivation, inequality, injustice, and official incompetence that mobilize people as their perceptions of these problems. If the problems are viewed as inevitable or rooted in individual failings, there is no reason to demand systemic change. Not surprisingly, wealthy elites - including those who own the mass media - tend to "blame the victim" because they do not wish to contribute to systemic changes that would benefit the less fortunate.

Disposing of blame-the-victim propaganda is a necessary precursor to systemic change. In the civil rights movement, for example, blacks first had to be persuaded not to blame themselves for their inferior status.

Grassroots wilt is a scourge that goes virtually unnoticed. Because it receives so little attention, people have come to view citizen involvement as unusual, and citizen action as a waste of time. Activists and those who are interested in the larger project of strengthening civil society need to pay far more attention to its causes. Even a little attention could have enormous consequences by drawing out those who have a natural interest in public business, those who wish to spend less time at a regular job, and those of the baby boomer generation who are leaving the workforce but want to do something that will make a difference.

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