Mancur Olson

Mancur Lloyd Olson, Jr. (born January 22, 1932 in Grand Forks ( USA ), † February 19, 1998 ) was an American economist who laid out his work on an interdisciplinary basis and also helped shape the development of sociology and political science .

Life

After graduating from North Dakota State University , Olson studied economics at Oxford University and received his PhD from Harvard University in 1963 . He got his first appointment as assistant professor from Princeton University , where he worked until 1967. He then worked for a short time at the US Department of Health and Social Affairs.

In 1969 he accepted a chair in economics at the University of Maryland . At this university in 1990 he founded the Center on Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS, German: Center for Institutional Reform and the Black Economy).

He later founded the Public Choice Society with James M. Buchanan, among others , of which he was the sixth president. He also served as President of the Social and Economic Sciences Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Vice President of the American Economic Association . Since 1985 he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

plant

He is considered a representative of the theory of rational decision ( rational choice theory ) and used this to analysis of collective action in groups to entire nations .

Logic of collective action

In his work, Logic of Collective Action , written in 1965, Olson deals with the problems for groups if all of their members behaved rationally in accordance with the theory of rational decision-making. The starting point of his deliberation is a criticism of the liberal pluralism of Bentley and Truman, which determined the political science discussion especially in the 1950s, and of Marxism . Both approaches have in common the postulate criticized by Olson that no problems arise in the provision of collective goods as long as the members of the organization have a common interest in these collective goods. Olson now shows that this correspondence between individual and collective rationality is not inevitable, but rather that the provision of collective goods by a group is precarious because it can be more rational for individual group members to act not in the interests of the group, but rather to maximize one's own benefit .

This gives rise to problems in organizing groups. Based on the size of the group, he differentiates between privileged groups, medium-sized groups and latent groups, whereby rational action only plays a role in latent groups in which the contributions of a member are no longer perceptible due to the size of the group . In these latent groups, the free-riding problem is constantly virulent and the organization must provide so-called selective incentives (positive or negative) in order to enable collective action.

In " free riders " ( free-rider problem- ), which benefit from the collective action of others without drawing their own contribution, there is no incentive more to participate in the collective action. At this point, Olson's borrowing from the theory of public goods comes to light: The prerequisite for the problem mentioned is that - as with public goods - no one can be excluded from the “consumption” or use of the collective good ( non-exclusivity ), such as a lighthouse: a shipowner does not need to contribute anything to the maintenance of the lighthouse , because others would set it up for their security needs even without his contribution and it cannot be excluded from “consumption”.

Olson also points to a second problem, the cause of which is closely related to group size, the so-called trivial contribution problem . It is very similar to the free-riding problem, but it points even more strongly to group size as a cause of collective action problems. In summary, four main points can be identified here.

“With increasing group size

1. the effects of individual refusal to contribute decrease,
2. also decreases the visibility of this refusal,
3. the benefit for the individual may decrease and
4. organizational costs increase. "

Suppose my own contribution is only a fraction of the funds an organization needs to provide the public good due to the large number of members. Then I have little incentive to continue making this contribution because it cannot improve an organization's ability to achieve its goals. At this point the scope of Olson's theory becomes clear, which not only provides useful statements for economics , but in particular can support the analysis of collective action in politics. In relation to organizations in political life, the collective good can take various forms as long as it is beneficial to the members of the organization. For an association for motorists (e.g. ADAC ) , for example, this could represent the implementation of a reduction in vehicle tax or the union's wage increase for its union members. Theoretical questions can be as follows: Why should I become a member of a party or trade union with many members in which my interests are drowned out? Why should I be a member of an association if it gains advantages for me even without my contribution.

In a more abstract way, the theory can also raise the following question: Why should I vote if it is only in exceptional cases that my vote decides which party comes into government?

According to Olson, the decisive factor is not the will to contribute directly to a public good, but rather the incentive to do so indirectly. This makes it a question of institutional arrangements whether group members see themselves - through selective incentives - induced to act in the common group interest. In this respect, Olson's group-theoretical paradox is that rational actors, precisely because of their individual rationality, can only pursue a common group interest in a socially desirable manner with the help of the incentive effects of institutional arrangements, the direct analogue of the classical theorem of the invisible hand. "

Using the presented systematics, Olson examines trade unions in the USA, medical journals and the farm offices of American agriculture. In the end, he goes into the social theory of Karl Marx and shows that the interest groups of the proletariat and bourgeoisie in Marx will not ally themselves and act together according to the rational criteria that Marx assumed.

The rise and fall of nations

The work, published in 1982, develops an economic theory of the relationship between the degree of organization of interest groups and the rate of economic growth in an economy. The author distinguishes himself from the “classic liberal laissez-faire ideology”, “that the government that rules the least is best.” By no means would the markets solve every problem on their own if the government just left them alone ( German edition, p. 233). Due to the self-interest of the interest groups, they did not necessarily work in the interests of the assumed common good of the state.

literature

Primary literature

• Literature by and about Mancur Olson in the catalog of the German National Library

• The logic of collective action: collective goods and the theory of groups . 5th edition Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004. (Original edition: The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups 1965) ISBN 3-16-148504-1 .
• Rise and fall of nations: econom. Growth, stagflation, etc. social rigidity (English original title: The Rise and Decline of Nations, 1982). Mohr, Tübingen 1985. ISBN 3-16-944810-2 .
• Comprehensive economy. Mohr, Tübingen 1991. ISBN 3-16-345460-7 .
• Power and prosperity: outgrowing communist and capitalist dictatorships . Translated by Gerd Fleischmann. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002. Engl. Original title: Power and prosperity . ISBN 3-16-147536-4 .

See also: New Political Economy , Utilitarianism

Secondary literature

• Russell Hardin: Collective Action . Johns Hopkins University Press , Baltimore 1982.
• Ingo Pies : Theoretical foundations of democratic economic and social policy. Mancur Olson's contribution . In: ders. / Martin Leschke (ed.): Mancur Olson's logic of collective action . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1997. pp. 1-26.
• Klaus Schubert (Hrsg.): Achievements and limits of political-economic theory: a critical inventory of Mancur Olson. Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 1992. ISBN 3-534-11361-6 .
• Berndt Keller : Interest organization and mediation of interests. The Limits of Neoclassical Institutionalism in Olson's 'Rise and Decline of Nations'. Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology , 43, 3, 1990, pp. 502-524.
• Dehling, Jochen / Schubert, Klaus: Economic Theories of Politics, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , Wiesbaden 2011

Web links

• Jörg Faust : Mancur Olson (1932–1998). Why are some countries poor and others rich? The role of institutions and good governance . In: D + C Development and Cooperation , issue 10/2002, pp. 277–280.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dehling, Jochen / Schubert, Klaus: Economic theories of politics . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011.
2. ↑ Pies 1997, p. 7.