Between Individual Rationality And Government Power

Mancur Olson is a famous economist of America and he is the founder of public choice theory,but his contribution is far beyond the sphere of economics and substantially affects the development of the sphere of politics and other social science. The author intends to systemically study Mancur Olson's political thought by the method of logical structure and take individual rationality as the plot line that throughout his political thought;also the author expounds the theory of collective action,distribution groups and the theory of government by reasoning the relationship of individual rationality and collective rationality,country vicissitude and government power,then he review the value and defects of these theories.The thesis is divided to three parts structurally.Part I(chapter I)mainly analysis the theory foundation of Mancur Olson's political thought which includes theory conditions,hypothesis and theory background.The putting forward of Mancur Olson's political thought is intimately associated with public goods theory which composed of rational individual hypothesis and methodology individualism. The public goods theory points out that market failure results from the non-exclusion of public goods and this give out the possibility for group members to get a"free ride"; but the maximization stimulation of rational individual hypothesis and methodology individualism make"free ride"possible to become true. As to the theory background,Mancur Olson's political thought is set in the criticism of traditional political group theory and he thought that individuals are the real factors of society. If take on account of how individuals take part in groups,of why they devote for groups and just take it for granted that individuals set up groups only for their own and they act in the form of collection to realize their common interests,the conclusions are so hasty and can't remedy through the tests of history. And Mancur Olson get to a conclusion entirely contrary with traditional political groups theory that starting with individual rationality,members of big groups will never take collective action.Part II includes chapter two,three,and four. In this part,author mainly academically analysis the Mancur Olson's political thought. Chapter two , the confliction of individual rationality and collection rationality: the start line of Mancur Olson theory constructing. Author thought that Mancur Olson construct his collective action theory on the basis of the confliction of individual rationality and collection rationality: to start with individual rationality and to form the collective rationality spontaneously and naturally. The high profile of individual rationality possibly results in collective irrationality. And there must be three condition if move from individual rationality to collection rationality,the first one,a driving system,a selective stimulation is needed,it's one process of systematization; the second one,a smaller scale group; the third one,no equalitarianism exists in the allocation of power,benefit and contribution. After all,in the range of group,the confliction of individual interest and collective interest; the"free ride"of individuals leads to the dilemma of collective action; the collective action theory are both the core of Mancur Olson's political thought and the tool to analysis economical prosperity issues.Chapter three,"from individual rationality to country vicissitude: theory dilemma of Mancur Olson."Mancur Olson applies collection action theory to analyzing country vicissitude,that means,when the stability continues,more and more interest groups occurs and they all incline to devote to win more share for their members and have little concern of the decline and lose of social interest. The distributional action can be divided to two forms: one is lobbying,it strives for preferential policies,the other is setting up market monopoly organization to raise the income of their members at the cost of reduce social total output. The distributional action of interest groups has enhanced the market monopoly and make the government public character shrink,in the end it leads to the lose of social vitality and slowing down of economic development,then rigid system occurs. The action of distributional groups have the characteristic of antidemocratic: they all focus on the non-economic activities such as lobbying and Cartel which results in the social politicizing; then the minority control policies by setting up collective action successfully and make root the public policies in special interests instead of common interests then injure the interest of majority. Even there is broad groups which have encompassing interests,but their function is limited and hard to break the distributional pattern,so the economic growing impetus weakening and economic recessing step by step.Chapter four:"individual rationality and government power: interpretation and design of Mancur Olson". Mancur Olson cite in the reasoning of power in the answer of how to make economic prospers come true to explain that the level of prospers depends on the relationships of individual rationality and government power or government and market. Mancur Olson objected"the social contract"and construct a model of stationary bandits to explain the origination of government: roving bandits and stationary bandits both have their own individual rationality and the difference is that roving bandits have limited capability to settle down and inclined to plunder one-off maximum and stationary bandits can settle down to monopoly with common interest so that they inclines to make a reasonable tax rate,to provide public goods and pursue a long-term maximum interest. The stationary bandits make them the"governor"and replace the anarchy with governments to set up countries. Furthermore,Mancur Olson explains the complex relationship of government power,individual rationality and economic prospers: institutions originated from government power regular and limit the actions of individual rationality and control the benefit results individuals winning in the market interaction. The relationship between government power and individual rationality plays a indispensable role in economic prospers and different government power together with its structure guided by individual rationality will lead to a different economic performance. The theory fully embodies Mancur Olson's theory of market-augmenting government,that is,governments must have the adequate power to protect private property right,to execute contracts effectively,to limit the robbing of individual property right and to promote social economic prospers. As to the reason of governors who strive for ensuring individual property rights and for avoiding plundering,it is not their kindness or mercy but the existing common interests,but the self-interest choice of individual rationality.Part III,chapter five,author evaluates Mancur Olson's political thought and summarize its theatrical value and defects. Mancur Olson's political thought has a profound influence on social science. First,collective action theory try to change context of"classed politics"to context of"interests groups". Second,Mancur Olson theories deepen the cognition of government roles and compensate the deficiency of analyzing government functions from the point of politics and macroeconomics that with a shortage of microcosmic bases.Nevertheless,Mancur Olson theories are not questionable,in the thesis,author analyzes their theoretical defects from three aspects. First,it is limitation analysis assumed by rational individuals. Although Mancur Olson didn't take the individual material benefits demands as the single assumption of his theories,but he referred the influences imposed on collective actions by social stimulations such as reputation,respect,and friendship,etc. in the discussion of small groups. For the reasons of that collective action theory mainly focuses on big groups and the functions of spiritual benefits are not paid enough attention,this proves a limitation of self-benefits; second,it is the queried collective actions logic. Peoples like Robert Salisbur come up with models of political entrepreneur and they thought Mancur Olson focused only on tangible interests and overlooked the intangible interests including concepts interests and participants interests,which always associated with collective actions,so big groups can act effectively by intangible interests guidance and have no need to take a stimulating or compulsory action. Third,it is the analysis of blind spots and bias of power categories. Mancur Olson didn't reason the relationships of power and responsibilities,contracts with relative comprehension and this lead to a shortage in connotation of power. Secondary,in his stationary bandits model,there is no enough elaborate on power origination and a bias on goverment origination. At last,there is also a deficiency of attention on bad power and to ground his theories on"good power"has its idealistic character to some degree.