On Theories and Practices of Collective Action and Sustained Cooperation

In his essay that follows, planner, scholar and regional scientist Kieran Donaghy sets out the significance of the problem of collective action in a deceptively simple way. He writes, “There is a one-word answer to the so-called Hobbesian question of how society is at all possible – cooperation.” But cooperation, of course, is hardly simple when actors may be diverse, when resources appear scarce, when values and interests are multiple, ambiguous, and conflicting. But more too: for many years the prospects of collective action seemed threatened precisely to the extent that actors were presumed to be individual utility maximizers, so-called “rational economic” decision-makers, if not always “men.” For theorists of social and political action – or cooperation – that posed an uncomfortable conundrum. Powerful models of rationality seemed unable to explain collective action very well. Obvious examples of collective action seemed, in turn, to cast doubt on the models of rational action. This quandary recalls the joke about the two planning theorists sitting at the bar: one listens attentively to the other, but then says, “Sure, that’s easy: it works in practice, but does it work in theory?” As editors, we have been interested in the intersections of theory and practice as found in discussions of collective action and sustained cooperation: how might our prevailing theories support or undermine planning practices, public policies, or even social action? Can theories of justice or injustice ever inspire or inform social action? When it comes to considerations of collective action, we suspect that if our prevailing theories of rationality imply that real cooperation is difficult or unlikely, the problem is more likely to be in our theories than in our everyday lives. The essays in this Interface developed on the occasion of Oxford University Press’s publication of Pokharel’s Beyond Collective Action Problems in 2024. That study offered a systematic, empirically-based refinement of Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel prize-winning, path-breaking work, Governing the Commons, by supplementing and reconsidering her extensive fieldwork in Nepal. Pokharel argued that sustained cooperation depended in significant measure on cooperators’ perceptions of injustice, their being treated justly or unjustly as cooperators. But perhaps Nepali farmers and irrigators represented a context too far afield? We hoped that an Interface devoted to recent thinking and rethinking of collective action and sustained cooperation in planning would clarify the state of the art. We have organized this symposium to present fresh analyses of collective action and sustained cooperation by planning scholars and researchers. How might a multi-disciplinary group of contributors address these questions in a planning context? The essays that follow touch on issues of ethics and rationality, law, religion, and everyday planning practices as well.