Explanations are provided for why governments do as they do in agriculture. Alternative frameworks are assessed to explain government policy including collective action and politician-voter interaction models. Several key patterns of policies are analyzed including the “developmental...

The paper develops a sociological approach for understanding the role of expectations in collective action. It argues that an approach based on expectations is better suited to explain collective action in episodes of social change than existing sociological theories. Two case studies - one on...

Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations people face a dilemma about making individually costly but...

We investigate situations in which players make costly contributions as group members in a group conflict, and at the same time engage in contest with fellow group members to appropriate the possible reward. We introduce within group power asymmetry and complementarity in members'efforts, and...