The Catch-22 of Collective Action
The Common Denominator of PBL’s and Climate Change Policy
M. D. Kwak
The group project is perhaps one of the most dreaded and stressful times of an adolescent’s schooling. It can be the fall of even the most experienced diplomats and prudent academicians. But why? What about the group project environment makes it so difficult to navigate? I would suggest it shares its root problem with issues like climate change inaction, decreased political buy-in and persisting poverty – the collective action problem.
The collective action problem arises out of a scenario where a group of individuals have shared common interests and would mutually benefit from cooperation. The issue that arises is when individuals act on their own conflicting self-interests which discourage joint action. Most commonly it is a result of individuals rationally wanting to benefit from a preferred outcome without necessarily paying for it themselves. It’s also the unfortunate case that, regardless of whether others decide to opt out or not, it is always “better” not to cooperate. If everyone else participates in cooperation, opting out would give you a competitive advantage in terms of extra resources and time to spend. If most choose to opt out of cooperation for similar reasons, continuing to remain would constitute a disproportionate amount of labour for limited rewards. Implicit in this thinking is an assumption that the remaining collective would be able to function without them and still create benefits. It’s seen when a citizen convinces themselves that their vote won’t matter as it’s only one out of millions of others; or Australia’s excuse of “only contributing a tiny fraction to climate change anyways.”
The concept of freeriding becomes crucial here. In this scenario, defectors are called freeriders because they benefit from the cooperation of others yet are unwilling to reciprocate with proportionate or any cooperation at all. Such creatures are common in society and most annoying in group projects. However, far from something to be dismissed, freeloaders constitute the fundamental deadlock which makes the collective action problem so difficult to resolve. Freeloaders initiate an inevitable spiral whereas for every freeloader, the people who remain to work are increasingly burdened with work and see diminishing returns for their efforts. This in turn creates more and more freeloaders who hope to benefit from an outcome they don’t have to contribute to – until there is a tipping point at which the people who remain working cannot sustain themselves and the freeloaders – and the whole thing just falls apart.
Climate change inaction is a perfect example. It is a problem that inherently requires collective action due to its extraordinary scale and time-sensitive nature. Existentially, environmentally and economically, it is probably in every nation’s long-term interest to cooperate when it comes to stopping climate change. However, each of these nations possess and act upon their short-term interests, which is especially potent considering short-term election cycles. The result? Either no or very limited willingness to act.
Collective action problems have often been compared to the prisoner’s dilemma – it certainly shares its puzzling and paradoxical nature. At its core, however, it is an unfortunate result of people trying to act out of their own self-interest – trying to be that rational free-rider – only for them to face a bizarrely irrational harm in the long-term.
