POLI 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: The Strongest, Collective Action
7 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Two problems of the balance of power: collective action, coordination. Buck-passing: getting another state - failure to balance. Balancing: joining status quo states to prevent rising power/maintain existing distribution. Bandwagoning: joining rising power to profit from change in distribution of power. Collective action: is when everyone in a group benefits from a good, but someone has to contribute to it, and there is no third party enforcing compliance. But there are incentives to contribute nothing. It arises when some people skip paying the costs, and get the benefit: free riders. Buckpassers are considered as free riders within an alliance. There is a collective action: many states, including nato declared war on iraq. There is a collective good: everyone benefits from iraq losing the war. In 1991, the coalition still won the iraq war us picked up the buck. When allies fear free-riding (buckpassing), a collective action problem can become a coordination problem.
