ABSTRACT
Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action was first published in 1965. In 1968 it appeared in paperback, and a revised edition of the book, both hard and softcover, was published in 1971. Though written by an economist, the work's conclusions are, as he points out, "as relevant to the sociologist and the political scientist as they are to the economist" (Olson, 1971, p. 3). If anything, this is an understatement, as the work directly challenges long-held paradigms in both of those fields by the simple expedient of applying to the study of groups and organizations the assumption that individuals are rational and act in a self interested manner. Nevertheless, it has taken sociologists and political scientists more than a few years to come to realize its relevance. Now the news is out, however, and in the past several years an increasing number of scholars in those disciplines have been enthusiastically plowing the old fields of interest groups and social movements with the new plow of Olsonian rational choice analysis. Most find it too radical an innovation to adopt en toto and yet so provocative and suggestive that they are forced to rethink some fundamental questions about collective action. This activity has expressed itself in critical analyses of the model itself; in a reworking of the disciplines' existing paradigms in light of new insights gained from Olson; and, lately, in attempts to test the resulting theories empirically. Thus far the critique of Olson is well advanced, some very useful reconceptualizations of fields such as social movements have occurred, and the empirical testing is in its infancy.
