Obituary: Thoughts on Mancur Olson's Contribution to Political Science 1932-1998

Author(s): James E. Alt

Source: Public Choice, Vol. 98, No. 1/2 (Jan., 1999), pp. 1-4
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30024464 .
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 Public Choice 98: 1-4, 1999.
a 1999 KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Obituary

Thoughtson MancurOlson'scontributionto politicalscience

1932-1998 *

JAMESE. ALT
FrankG. ThomsonProfessor of Governmentand Director Centerfor Basic Researchin the
Social Sciences, HarvardUniversity,LittauerM-27, Cambridge,MA 02138, U.S.A.

We - I mean we in political science - lost a leaderwhen MancurOlson died,

regrettablyfar too young. To help you understandwhat MancurOlson meant
to politicalscience, how very special andvaluablehe was, I wantto takea few
minutesfirstto explainto you just how widely his workwas readboth within
andacrosssubdisciplinesof politicalscience. Let me tryto give you an idea of
that. Measuringhow widely someone's work is read can be treacherous,but
we are fortunateto get help from the organizersof the 1994 InternationalPo-
litical Science Association 16th WorldCongress.They did two things. One,
they organizeda set of panels on "Thestate of the discipline"and published
the papers. The papers make a substantialdatabase,comprising a book of
some 800 pages.' Bias is possible in such a source. However,neitherof the
organizersandeditors,Bob Goodinof the AustralianNationalUniversityand
Hans-DieterKlingemannof Berlin, are far out of the mainstreamof political
science, and of course theirbook is the new handbookof Political "Science",
not political economy or anythingelse like that!
Even betterfor our purposes,the editors searchedall the referencesin all
the pages of this book, counted the citations of individualsand books, and
even publishedsome tables with the resultsof their search.Here is what they
found. Perhapsno surprise,across the whole discipline, that is, across their
entirebook, no economist cracksthe top ten most-citedindividuals(it is after
all a book of political science), but two economists grace the next ten, Dou-
glass North,the Presidentof this society, andMancurOlson. Whenthe editors
count individualbooks ratherthan individualpeople, books by two econo-
mists are among the top three most-cited books: Downs' Economic theory
of democracy and Olson's Logic of collective action. Goodin and Klinge-

* Presentedto the AnnualConferenceof the InternationalSociety for the New Institutional

Economics, Paris, 18 September1998.

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2

mann divided the field into eight subdisciplines,and Mancurturnedout to

be cited in six: only one person (a political scientist, Elinor Ostrom) was
cited even more broadly.And when they finally came to ask, Who of those
most frequentlycited within a subdisciplineis also among those most often
cited across differentsubdisciplinesand most often cited in the disciplines
as a whole? - there were half a dozen well-known political scientists, and
MancurOlson. So the first thing to understandabout Mancuris, he made a
big contribution,political scientistsnoticedit, andnoticedit notjust in public
policy and administration,but in all subfields,acrossthe whole field. And of
course, that story could be repeatedin other disciplines,for one of the most
strikingthings is how widely Mancurwas read and appreciatedacross not
just political science but also in economics and sociology, at least.
And what was his big contribution?It was nothing short of a revolution.
Olson explicitly attackedthe optimisticclaim of older grouptheory that in-
dividualswith commoninterestswould automaticallyor voluntarilyact so as
to try to furtherthose interests.As Mancursummarizedthe acceptedview,
... if the membersof some grouphave a common interestor object, and
they would all be better off if that objective were achieved, it has been
thoughtto follow logically thatthe individualsin the groupwould, if they
were rationaland self-interested,act to achievethatobjective.2

This was the orthodoxy,that groupsariseto give voice to politicallyrelevant

demands,and this was the political science I was taughtas an undergraduate
at Columbia,home of David Truman,an architectof this group theory of
politics.
Olson's challenge was straightforward. He assumedthat rationalindivid-
uals participatein collective action the way they do everythingelse, that is,
do not participatebeyond the point where marginalcosts exceed marginal
benefits.He combinedthis assumptionwith the observationthatif what was
providedwas a public good (nonexcludableandjoint in supply), there even
might be no marginalbenefitsat all. This was especially likely in the case of
a largegroup- thatis, when organizationaleffort,while individuallya costly
transaction,has only infinitesimaleffects on producingbenefits. Hence, ab-
sent coercionor some otherspecial force, rationalindividualsmightnot act to
achieve theircollective interests.Of course, in small or "intermediate"sized
groups, measuredby how noticeable and effective an individual's actions
were, there could be much more to say, and Mancursaid a lot of it. But his
mainpoint,thatsocial forces cannotexplainthe originsof big interestgroups,
was a bombshellto traditionalpolitical science.
Not that traditionalpolitical science noticed right away,however.At Co-
lumbia they taughtme no Olson, even though I graduatedthree years after

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 3

Mancur'sbook appeared.In fact, the Handbookof political science, a seven-

volume compendiumpublishedin the mid 1970s, despite havingtwo articles
devotedto grouptheoriesand interestgroups,barely acknowledgedthe con-
tributionhe made.3One articlepreferredto avoid it by alleging thatpolitical
science dealtwith the case of whatgroupsachieve conditionalon theirhaving
formed,4like saying that economics studies the profitabilityof firms,condi-
tional on their having made a profit. So the road to the prominenceI first
describedwas a slow one, but he got there,deservedly,in the end.
Along the way Mancur,always energetic, made other contributions.His
second "big"book, Therise and decline of nations,5was a book thatI loved to
teach and aboutwhich I loved to arguewith him, both publicly and privately.
Later he wrote an interestingpaper on indivisibilities, things "beyond the
measuringrod of money",as he put it.6 Mancursaw indivisibilityas arising
at least whereverthere were public goods and economies of scale, but even
more as offering a basis for a unified view of economics and social science.
In otherwords,the ubiquityof indivisibilitieswas his partof the widespread,
chafingdissatisfactionwith the standardneoclassicalmodel of economics we
increasinglyobserve in the recentwritingsof well-knowneconomists, many
of whom arehere today.And most recently,he struggledto findthe originsof
democracyin the inabilityof leadersto establishautocracy,and was saluted
with an awardfor writingthe best paperof the year in the AmericanPolitical
Science Review,our flagshipjournal.7
Mancur'scontributionwas to open the door to the formal study of col-
lective action. But his legacy, as opposed to his own contribution,big as it
was, is in the hands and minds of others. Gary Miller, in an article in last
year'sJournalof EconomicLiterature,describesa two-decade-longprogram
of experimentalanalysisof contributionsto public goods, integratingOlson's
participationdecision with theories of altruism,communication,and group
acceptance.8Lin Ostrom'sbook Governingthe commonsintegratesa host of
empiricalstudies in orderto describe how individualsstruggleto find ways
to commit themselves to rules for allocation, monitoring,and sanctioning.9
Lin's book buildson Mancur'sconcernfor the preconditionsfor participation,
seeking solutionsin the theoriesof the new institutionalism.That she should
be the most widely cited authorin the New handbook,quotedin every single
subdisciplineof political science, is, I think, a nice way for membersof this
Society to see and rememberwhat MancurOlson meantto political science.
He should have gracedthis Society's meetings with his presencefor another
twenty years.

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4

References

1. Goodin, Robert, and Klingemann, Hans-Dieter (Eds.) (1996). The new handbook of
political science. Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.
2. Olson, Mancur(1965). The logic of collective action. Cambridge:HarvardUniversity
Press, p. 1.
3. See Greenstone,J. David, Grouptheories.In Fred Greensteinand Nelson Polsby (Eds.)
(1975). Thehandbookof political science. New York:Addison-Wesley,Vol. 2, pp. 243-
318, and Salisbury,Robert, Interestgroups. In Greensteinand Polsby, The handbook,
Vol. 4, pp. 171-228.
4. Greenstone,J.D., Grouptheories,p. 248.
5. Olson, Mancur (1982). The rise and decline of nations. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
6. Olson, Mancur (1990). Towards a unified view of economics and the other social
sciences. In James Alt and Kenneth Shepsle (Eds.), Perspectives of positive political
economy.New York:CambridgeUniversityPress.
7. Olson, Mancur(1993). Dictatorship,democracy,and development.American Political
Science Review 87: 567-576.
8. Miller, Gary (1997). The impact of economics on contemporarypolitical science.
Journalof EconomicLiterature35: 1173-1204.
9. Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the commons. New York: Cambridge University
Press.

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