PSC 121 Lecture 1: PSC 121

• School: Syracuse University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: PSC 121
• Professor: Thompson

Document Summary

Harold lasswell 1936: makes strange bedfellows, creates coalitions, unlike minded people who nonetheless act together, politicians build coalitions. Choices have to be made: conflict. Structure to help us live together as a community. Big theme of the course: governments solve collective dilemmas. Politics and collective action: politics involves collective action, all parties better off than they would be acting alone, requires overcoming several common problems. Problems of collective action: priso(cid:374)er(cid:859)s dile(cid:373)(cid:373)a- individually rational actions can be collectively irrational, tragedy of the commons, free riding- collective action often produces collective goods; individual contributions insignificant; incentive for inaction/shirking; worse with larger groups. Costs of collective action: transaction costs- time and energy it takes to reach an agreement, conformity costs- (cid:272)ost of goi(cid:374)g (cid:449)ith the group(cid:859)s de(cid:272)isio(cid:374) rather tha(cid:374) perso(cid:374)al preference, these two are inversely related. Solving collective action problems: delegation of authority. Agent and principal have conflicting interests/ goals. Agents power: hidden action, hidden information.