The Complex Collective Action Of Villagers' Voluntary Supplying Of Public Goods

It has been a long history about the research of collective action. More than 2000 years ago, Aristotle thought that every belongs to the most people's public affairs is frequently the thing which is paid attention by the minority of people, people often take care of their own things, but neglects the public affairs. After the 1960s, the western theoretical circle paid more and more attention to the research of collective ction. While carries on the critique to the traditional community theory, the West presented many theory schools of thought, including the rational choice theory, the social capital theory and repeated game model and so on. Among them, Olson's"free ride"theory and Ostrom's self-organization theory, on behave of the viewpoint of rational choice theory, become mainstream of collective action research. Through having carried on the critique to the traditional community theory, which thought individuals who have common interests will take the collective action voluntarily, rational choice theory put forward collective action dilemma of "free rider" when rational individuals face collective interests of public goods, and give solutions for collective dilemma. From the aspect of social structure variables, such as group network norms and trust, the social capital theory analyzes the possibilityies of how to overcome the collective action dilemma. Repeated game theory model gives the viewpoint that the cooperative behavior will occur among players when their game times are more enough for a long time from the perspective of formal theory. Domestic research on collective action is relatively disorder, mainly based on experience theories according to a certain aspect of social variables'influence to the collective action.Because public goods are relative to the private products, with exclusive and non-competitive features, it will also inevitably exsist a "free-rider" collective action dilemma in the provision of public goods. In the current period of social transformation in China, rural effective provision of public goods become the key to the construction of new rural areas. At present, there are mainly two ways for the supply of public goods in rural areas including the input of government and spontaneous cooperation with the villagers. After implementing the rural taxes and fee reform, the government's investment is insufficient, so the villagers'spontaneous cooperative behavior for the supply of some small rural public goods becomes more important."Chinese farmer is good at separation not cooperation", said Caojinqing in the book of"China in the yellow river areas", therefore, the difficulty is how to overcome the dilemma in collective action of villagers spontaneous cooperative behavior. With villagers voluntary collective action for public goods provision in rural areas, the paper proposes the issues for research. The first is about the driving force of villagers spontaneous collective action mechanism in the supply of public goods, the second is about the organization mechanisms in the process of collective action. The former mainly refers to how the spontaneous collective action initiated cooperation and spontaneous order of the unified thinking, and the latter mainly refers to the maintenance of a common capacity for action.In this paper, study is carried on including theoretical analysis and experience surveys. In the aspect of theoretical analysis, the paper mainly analyzes theories of rational choice theory, social capital theory and repeated game mode according to their own tudy assumptions and analysis perspective. Rational choice theory analyzes the reason of dilemma in collective action and gives the solution in terms of the assumption of "private rationality". Rational choice theory mainly include Olsen's "free ride" theory, Ostrom's independent organization theory and Buchanan's public choice theory. In "The Logic of Collective Action", Olsen thinks that a group with the expansion of the scale, it is more prone to individual "free rider" dilemma, and small organization principle of selective incentive mechanism will overcome the dilemma. Ostrom'independent organization theory is different from Olsen'viewpoint in a way, she believes that the design of the system under certain conditions, rational people will possibly cooperate for the collective interests. Putnam'public-choice theory which is opposite to traditional political theory believe that the same individuals in the political sphere also play the "economic man" role, so in the process of public choice government and individuals not only play a "political " role, but more importantly play a " Economic Man " role, and this viewpoint is helpful to understand the game relation between villagers and village committee for the provision of public goods in current rural areas in china. Putnam'social capital theory differs from the hypothesis of rational people of rational choice theory, from the aspect of social structure variables, such as group network norms and trust, the social capital theory analyzes the possibilityies of how to overcome the collective action dilemma. also some scholars'viewpoints, such as the legality of the Mary ? Douglas'sharing concept, Marwell & Oliver critical group pressure, Zhangmaoyuan'familiar degree in the community, Hexuefeng, Liuyuzhao's groups polarization views are also from the point of view of social structure for the solution of collective action dilemma. Axelrod'repeated game model theory believes that cooperative behavior can come into being when game players take part in the collective action more frequently and this can effectively restrict individual speculation. In fact, the repeated game theory research of collective action is a kind of integration of the above two points of view, because rational individuals often show a "bounded rationality" with the steady-going anticipation of future intercourse. So we can study the collective behaviour in game model under the conditions of social structure variables. Empirical analysis in the paper is about a typical case in central Shaanxi, through local farmers'special logic of collective action in the process of paving road event, we enduce that repeated game model can help us explain the logic of collective better. Because villagers'game is based on the physical position, consanguinity and job relations, the participators in collective action are influenced not only by private rational incentive, but also the social incentive of characteristics of the social structure, such as the community culture, group seperation, social captial and so on. This kind of analysis has theoretical value in revealing contradictions between rational individual and collective rationality. Of course, the cooperation model is a formal game model, and the formal model can not be used to explain and predict phenomena, particularly complicated experience phenomena, at the same time experience phenomena is not the standard for testing a formal model. But successful formal model reveal revealed some general law of the society. For example, the theory of"free ride"reveals the truth that "three monks no water to drink". Therefore, this paper does not want to construct a theory criterion through the study of experence, we can easily understand the complicated logic of collective action by means of the general law that the the formal model reveals.