Re-Thinking the Logics of Collective Action by Interest Associations

The four "logics" of collective action that Wolfgang Streeck and I imagined in the early 1980s (instead of the single one advocated by Mancur Olsen) may still be affecting generically the institutions and practices of interest associations, but their relative importance seems to have changed. My macro-hypothesis is that this is due primarily to changes in the nature of capitalism and secondarily to changes in the nature of democracy. Put bluntly, in the original version, I was presuming the existence of an effective social contract between capital and labor – whether written or unwritten – that served to stabilize their relationship for some predictable time. That no longer exists – and presumably this will be reflected in changes in the relative importance of the four logics.