Structure and Strategy in Collective Action

This article considers both structural and strategic influences on collective action. Each person in a group wants to participate only if the total number taking part is at least her threshold; people use a network to communicate their thresholds. People are strategically rational in that they are completely rational and also take into account that others are completely rational. The model shows first that network position is much more important in influencing the revolt of people with low thresholds than people with high thresholds. Second, it shows that strong links are better for revolt when thresholds are low, and weak links are better when thresholds are high. Finally, the model generalizes the threshold models of Schelling (1978) and Granovetter (1978) and shows that their findings that revolt is very sensitive to the thresholds of people “early” in the process depends heavily on the assumption that communication is never reciprocal.