Collective Action Problems and their Implications: A Case Study of Dictatorships - Prof. S, Study notes of Political Science

Download Collective Action Problems and their Implications: A Case Study of Dictatorships - Prof. S and more Study notes Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! Post Comm Lecture 21 Collective Action Problem  A groups IQ is inversely proportional to the size of the group  Humans are all “sheep  If people are able to step up then it’s the people that don’t step that get the benefit as well  Anyone who doesn’t act and don’t take the risk but still get the benefit they are called “Free Riders”  Also need a line of communication to coordinate to fight this problem  Combat the fear that has been instilled by those in power Bataan Death March  The Americans out number the guards by a lot but no one takes the first step because of the collective action problem Dictatorship  Is exactly like the Collective Action Problem  Using fear, cutting off communication, and having a decent size of a police force you can control a whole country  The state wants the citizens to be literate so that they can feed them lies  Its easy for the government to seize TV and Radio Stations  The Internet changes all this for Russians o This makes it extremely cheap for people to send information o It makes it way easer to get people into the streets o Either dictatorship or full blown repression o So if they know you are using the internet you might take a middle ground so that the internet is shut down o “Great firewall of China” everything is limited and monitored