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"The primary structural purpose of the United States Constitution is to empower the federal government to solve problems that the states would need to act collectively to solve, and to prevent the states from undermining these solutions or causing such problems from the perspective of the Constitution or Congress. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include this main structural function. The Constitution was established principally because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states, including funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. These challenges are called collective-action problems because the states would need to cooperate or coordinate their behavior-they would need to act collectively, not individually-to solve them, and they would often struggle to do so. In a fundamental sense, the U.S. Constitution is the Collective-Action Constitution, and the sobering problems facing America today-including inadequate access to health care, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and future ones, opioid addiction, gun violence, racism and other bigotry, political extremism, unlawful immigration, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation-cannot be adequately dealt with by government if Americans do not recognize this truth. The main goal of the Collective-Action Constitution is not to vindicate a conception of economic efficiency, but to create and maintain political and economic union"--

This dissertation comprises 3 chapters dealing with collective action. Chapter 1 explores the behavior of individuals who face the provision of a public good that requires a minimal amount of aggregate contributions. Using a laboratory experiment we show that, unlike in the provision of linear public goods, an endogenous move order of players does not improve cooperation rates and payoffs. We also identify a specific externality: When observing unfair contributions, players wait for the contributions of others and thereby leave their group members uninformed about their willingness to contribute. Chapter 2 studies the valuation of bundles of public and private goods, such as sustainably fished seafood, certified wood products, or green electricity. We analyze individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for a private good, a cup, and a public good, a donation to a charity. In an experiment we offer the goods either as a bundle or separately. Our data show that the WTP for the bundle exceeds the WTP for the separately offered public and private good. A review of several behavioral concepts suggests behavior consistent with the data. Chapter 3 analyzes how the political system affects campaigns of political candidates and the voters' capacity to empower competent politicians. Our model shows that variations in power concentration involve a trade-off. On the one hand, higher power concentration enables the voters' preferred politician to enforce larger parts of his agenda. On the other hand, higher power concentration increases electoral stakes and distorts politicians' campaigns. We identify a negative relation between the optimal level of power concentration and the extent of politicians' office motivation. The results of an empirical analysis are in line with this prediction.

Why does it happen that ordinary people can come to participate in rebellious collective action? In the June 1986 issue of this Review, Edward N. Muller and Karl-Dieter Opp argued a public-goods model to account for why rational citizens may become rebels. They offered empirical data drawn from samples in New York City and Hamburg, Germany in support of the public-goods model. George Kolsko takes issue with the rationale of Muller and Opp, arguing that their public-goods model is not a rational-choice explanation of rebellious collective action. In response, Muller and Opp clarify their theory and further elaborate its assumptions.

Backed by studies finding only limited propensity for free-riding when communities have an interest in self-provision, the last few decades have seen a surge of interest in community-based development. A major caveat to the "second wave" of collective action studies, however, is that collective action often breaks down under hierarchical social relationships. This is unfortunate news for developing countries' rural societies, which are often entrenched in patron-client networks. Using a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway, the article finds that clientelist relationships do not, in and by themselves, block peasant collective action. Rather, it is the interaction between clientelism and isolation that empowers patrons to block community-based projects. Peasants in connected villages face no such constraints, but instead rely on their patrons' assistance in collective projects, making the hierarchical network an additional resource.

Many contemporary democracies seem to have emerged without a contest between the organized rich and poor. Correspondingly, redistributive contests between the rich and poor are not particularly notable in many new or poor democracies. Finally, poor democracies, which are also the least stable, do not exhibit particularly high income inequality, relative either to stable, rich democracies or to stable, poor autocracies. This article expands on these puzzles and suggests that a promising strategy to explore them involves examining variations across countries in the degree to which citizens can mobilize for collective action. Adapted from the source document.