Research on collective action has largely ignored the kinds of violent ideological movements that were a major preoccupation of earlier research on collective behavior. The models of mobilization that now dominate the field, designed to address the problem of free riders and individual choice in a relatively free political environment, offer little insight into the origins and development of such movements. The problem of individual choice and the aggregation of individual decisions into collective action remains a vital issue, however, and such concepts as dependence, monitoring capacity, and sanctions are essential to explanation. With an extended illustration of factional struggle and the mass victimization of suspected enemies of socialism during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this article illustrates the ways in which these concepts can be refashioned to address a different class of collective action: movements in which no clear collective good is sought and in which the choices of individuals are highly circumscribed by political organizations and settings.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adorno, T.
, E. Frankel-Brunswik, D. J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row.
2.
Baishui xian xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui. 1989. Baishui xianzhi (Baishui county gazeteer). Xian: Xian ditu chubanshe.
3.
Bernstein, T. P.1984. Stalinism, famine, and Chinese peasants: Grain procurements during the Greap Leap Forward. Theory and Society13:1-38.
4.
Chan, A.
1985. Children of Mao: Personality development and political activism in the red guard generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
5.
Chan, A.
, S. Rosen, and J. Unger. 1980. Students and class warfare: The social roots of the red guard conflict in Guangzhou (Canton). China Quarterly83:397-446.
6.
Chan, A.
, S. Rosen, and J. Unger, eds. 1985. On socialist democracy and the Chinese legal system: The Li Yizhe controversy. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
7.
Chong, D.
1991. Collective action and the civil rights movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8.
Coleman, J. S.
1990. Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9.
Colman, A. M.
1982. Game theory and experimental games. Oxford: Pergamon.
10.
Conquest, R.
1986. The harvest of sorrow: Soviet collectivization and the terror famine. New York: Oxford University Press.
11.
Davies, J. C.1962. Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review27:5-19.
Gamson, W.
1975. The strategy of social protest. Homewood, IL: Dorsey.
14.
Granovetter, M.1978. Threshold models of collective behavior. American Journal of Sociology83:1420-1443.
15.
Gurr, T. R.
1970. Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
16.
Hechter, M.
1987. The theory of group solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
17.
Hechter, M.
, and S. Kanazawa. 1993. Group solidarity and social order in Japan. Journal of Theoretical Politics5:455-493.
18.
Heckathorn, D.1988. Collective sanctions and the creation of prisoner's dilemma norms. American Journal of Sociology94:535-562.
19.
Heckathorn, D.1989. Collective action and the second-order free rider problem. Rationality and Society1:78-100.
20.
Heckathorn, D.1990. Collective sanctions and compliance norms: A formal theory of group-mediated social control. American Sociological Review55:366-384.
21.
Johnson, C.
1966. Revolutionary change. Boston: Little, Brown.
22.
Kornhauser, A.
1959. The politics of mass society. New York: Free Press.
23.
Lee, H. Y.
1978. The politics of the Chinese cultural revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
24.
Lipset, S. M.
1960. Political man: The social bases of politics. New York: Doubleday.
25.
Milgrom, P.
, and J. Roberts. 1988. An economic approach to influence activities in organizations. American Journal of Sociology (Supplement): S154-S179.
26.
Milgrom, P.
, and J. Roberts. 1990. Bargaining costs, influence costs, and the organization of economic activity. In Perspectives on positive political economy, edited by J. E. Alt and K. A. Shepsle, 57-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27.
North, D. C.
1990. Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
Oliver, P.1980. Rewards and punishments as selective incentives for collective action: Theoretical investigations. American Journal of Sociology85:1356-1375.
29.
Oliver, P.1993. Formal models of collective action. Annual Review of Sociology19:271-300.
30.
Olson, M.
1965. The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
31.
Paige, J. M.
1975. Agrarian revolution: Social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped world. New York: Free Press.
32.
Popkin, S. L.
1979. The rational peasant: The political economy of rural society in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press.
33.
Prendergast, C.1993. A theory of “yes men.”American Economic Review83:757-770.
34.
Rosen, S.
1982. Red guard factionalism and the cultural revolution in Canton (Guangzhou). Boulder, CO: Westview.
35.
Schelling, T. C.
1984. What is the business of organized crime? In Choice and consequence: Perspectives of an errant economist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
36.
Schurmann, H. F.
1968. Ideology and organization in Communist China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
37.
Selznick, P.
1952. The organizational weapon: A study of Bolshevik strategy and tactics. New York: Free Press.
38.
Smelser, N. J.
1963. Theory of collective behavior. New York: Free Press.
39.
Stinchcombe, A. L.1961. Agricultural enterprise and rural class relations. American Journal of Sociology67:165-176.
40.
Tilly, C.
1978. From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
41.
Tucker, R. C.
1971. Stalin, Bukharin, and history as conspiracy. In The Soviet political mind: Stalinism and post-Stalin change. New York: Norton.
42.
Unger, J.
1982. Education under Mao: Class and competition in Canton schools, 1960-1980. New York: Columbia University Press.
43.
Walder, A. G.
1986. Communist neo-traditionalism: Work and authority in Chinese industry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
44.
Walder, A. G.
1991. Cultural revolution radicalism: Variations on a Stalinist theme. In New perspectives on the cultural revolution, edited by W. A. Joseph, C.P.W. Wong, and D. Zweig, 41-62. Harvard Contemporary China Series no. 8. Cambridge, MA: Council of East Asian Studies.
45.
Walder, A. G., and X. X. Gong, eds. 1993. China's great terror: New documentation on the cultural revolution. Chinese Sociology and Anthropology26:1-103.
46.
White, L. T. III
. 1989. Policies of chaos: The organizational causes of violence in China's cultural revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
