"I know you, you know me": Investigating the Collective Action Theories of Mancur Olson and Sidney Tarrow

How do individuals come together around common interests? This question lies at the heart of Sidney Tarrow’s Power in Movement and Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action. Olson presents a parsimonious and generalizable theory of collective action centered on economic principles, arriving at a rather pessimistic view on the likelihood of successful group action: with efforts toward collective action riddled by the problem of free-riders. Tarrow takes issue with Olson’s viewpoint, focusing on a seeming deviation from Olsonian logic: the rare, but profound instances of extreme collective action witnessed in social movements throughout history. In account for this deviation, Tarrow constructs a collective action framework that redefines the boundaries of Olsonian logic. This paper will present the general contours of Olsonian group logic. Next, the authors’ differing conceptions of individual interest will be discussed, followed by Tarrow’s responses to Olsonian collective action barriers: focusing on social movements’ white-fire model, master frame construction, and use of inherited organizational structure.

Olsonian logic rests on parsimonious assumptions of human behavior. Individuals are viewed as rational actors with desires for various goods. Some of these goods are public goods: goods, that once achieved, are enjoyed by all members of a group—like clean water or air. Olson finds an individual disincentive to work toward these collective goods. Why? Individual actors can free-ride, looking to others to bring about the public good for them. Such individual rationality leads to a collective irrationality: with individual free-riding frustrating attempts at delivering public goods. To avoid this free-rider problem, Olson argues that groups can make selective incentives: giving carrots and sticks to insure they carry their weight. From required dues for debating societies to the power of registered party members to have a voice in party nominations, collective carrots and sticks run rampant within society. These selective incentives keep groups disciplined, allowing them to successfully implement policies-- whether it’s holding a college debate on the nature of collective goods or choosing the new leader of the British Conservative party. Incentives thus tend to make groups hierarchical, demanding considerable organizational resources to develop and—more importantly-- maintain group solidarity. Keeping people together in an Olsonian world is marked by an adversarial relationship: organizational leaders carefully exercising coercion to keep their members’ natural tendency towards inaction at bay.

Tarrow, in applying this logic to social movements, finds a puzzle: if collective action is such a time-consuming, deliberate and difficult process, why have bursts of collective action in the mode of social movements emerged? From French revolution to the 1960s hipster movements, individuals have periodically heard the collective call-to-arms summed up so eloquently by "Come together, right now, over me." Thus Olson's conception of individual interest or collective action barriers need to be re-worked. Tarrow attempts this task, promoting a dynamic and evolving model of collective action.

Tarrow complicates Olson's presentation of the individual actor. Accepting that most individuals follow simple cost-benefits analysis, Tarrow stresses the social factors of human existence. Humans are not just reservoirs of basic needs, but beings that construct and prioritize these needs. As such, Tarrow argues that people join movements “from the desire of advantage, to group solidarity, to principled commitment to a cause, to the desire to be part of a group (Tarrow 15).” Thus it is not free-riding that stymies social movements, but the need to coordinate such a diverse group of motivations (15).

Movements emerge with political openings that shift interest structures. These political openings can either be short or long-term. Offering an example of short-term opening, Tarrow points to Louis XVI’s tax reform, showing its unintended effect of splitting elite consensus (74). This immediate shift broke traditional support for the king, making space for other interests to be heard. Once repressed groups can promulgate their message and find other interested parties during times of interest transformation. And not all opportunities must be short-term, long term developments, such as changing class structure, can also offer openings for group mobilization (75).

But how do these newly liberated interests organize and articulate themselves within society? Olson presents a daunting challenge: demanding highly organized and durable groups to craft effective policy. Social movements tend to break-out fast, quickly moving from small pockets of dedicated leaders to massive demonstrations of diverse populations. Tarrow explains this deviant trajectory by focusing on the white-fire approach of groups involved in social movements. At heart these groups are articulations of Olsonian groups: core social leaders in a continuous struggle with status-quo force. Yet, when political opportunities open, they may find quick success. A group can then shift a particular cause to a “modular” message: one that speaks to a variety of individuals and a variety of causes. During critical moments that allow new interests societal center stage, malleable messages serve to quickly mobilize large groups (131).

Armed with space to communicate their cause and followers, another question must be answered: how do social movement leaders manage and mould their organization? Tarrow argues that social movements bypass Olsonian needs for organizational infrastructure by exploiting available organizational conduits. Tarrow thus injects an intriguing wrinkle to Olsonian logic: groups with 'weak' collective good aspirations can morph during critical historical moments (146). Tarrow offers the fostering of Islamic fundamentalism through religious institutions and the Catholic Church’s role in aiding the 1851 French insurrection as examples of successfully used inherited networks (146-47).

While social movements can cause dramatic social change, they still lack durability: tending to flash furiously and then petering out. Depending on undisciplined, outside sources for their energetic bursts, social movements tend to weaken as time goes on-- failing prey the Olsonian tendency towards inaction. Yet, these short-lasting bursts of collective fury can make lasting change (99): bringing social rights to opposed minorities or ridding nations of dynastic leaders. While demands may not be met completely, social movements mobilize large numbers of people and can bring about state reform or transformation within both open and closed societies.

Tarrow’s analysis of social movements rests on a historical narrative that delineates the evolving role of protest within the modern era. Looking to the past, Tarrow finds that social movements have learned from experience: modifying their tool-set over time to new conditions. His chief examples stand as the petition and the barricade. Using political openings, social movements capitalize on media-outlets and effective protest tools to maximize their short burst. As such, Tarrow suggests that social movements are not accidental deviations of collective action: instead they follow an alternative logic of collective action. What started as small communal acts of property destruction or effigy have grown and matured into national petitions, barricades, and rallies: simultaneously bringing more people together and increasing the volume of reformist voices.

Tarrow’s model, while debunking Olsonian barriers to collective action, still maintains some stands of Olsonian thought: the quick unraveling of social movements demonstrates an Olsonian tale of collective action instability. Yet, Tarrow demonstrates how these movements form in the first place: using political openings to catapult small movements into large ones, organizing their mobilized base through the use of pre-established institutions. This model of social action has grown matured over time; social movements have exploited advances in communication and learned from past experiences in order to maximize the possibility for group action and its capacity to encourage societal change. Tarrow thus offers a complimentary logic to Olson’s theory of collective action. Olson provides a theoretical outlook that presumes stable and known interest preferences for individual actors. Tarrow investigates periods of unstable interest structures, showing how powerful social movements throughout history have defied the theoretical barriers of Olsonian collective logic.