The weakness of strong ties: Collective action failure in a highly cohesive group*

We are grateful to Siegwart Lindenberg, Werner Raub, Frans N. Stokman, Rene Torenvlied, Peter Mühlau and Tom Boone for their careful criticisms and suggestions. Authors are listed alphabetically based on equal contributions. The paper was drafted during a research visit by the first author to Brandeis University, financed by the Dutch Science Foundation (grant no. SIR 12–1522). The second author wishes to acknowledge the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant no. SBR‐9312432). Direct all correspondence to Andreas Flache, email: [email protected]. Frans Stokman acknowledges and thanks NIAS, The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Science, Wassenaar, The Netherlands for partial support for his editorial work.

Following Homans, exchange theorists have modeled informal social control as an exchange of peer approval for compliance with group obligations. The exchange model predicts higher compliance in cohesive networks with strong social ties. However, previous specifications failed to incorporate bilateral exchange of approval. Computer simulations using a Bush‐Mosteller stochastic learning model show that bilateral exchanges evolve more readily than multilateral, causing social control to flow into the maintenance of interpersonal relationships at the expense of compliance with group obligations, a structural form of the “second‐order free‐rider problem.”

Key words:

• Collective action
• social control
• social networks
• group cohesiveness
• computer simulation
• stochastic learning
• social dilemmas

Notes

We are grateful to Siegwart Lindenberg, Werner Raub, Frans N. Stokman, Rene Torenvlied, Peter Mühlau and Tom Boone for their careful criticisms and suggestions. Authors are listed alphabetically based on equal contributions. The paper was drafted during a research visit by the first author to Brandeis University, financed by the Dutch Science Foundation (grant no. SIR 12–1522). The second author wishes to acknowledge the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant no. SBR‐9312432). Direct all correspondence to Andreas Flache, email: [email protected]. Frans Stokman acknowledges and thanks NIAS, The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Science, Wassenaar, The Netherlands for partial support for his editorial work.