Looks beyond the models to find out why people choose to act together in situations that the models find quite hopeless. This title uses three constructs of modern political economy - public goods, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and game theory - to test public choice theories against real world examples of collective action.

"Like its predecessor work, Mancur Olson's 'The Logic of Collective Action', Hardin's effort promises to prompt some original new research on interest group politics. This innovative and scholarly public choice effort both challenges and advances Olson and the important attention he directed toward the internal behavior of interest group participants. In this work, Hardin's primary conceptual contribution is to note the static rather than dynamic nature of the social exchange relationships postulated earlier. By emphasizing the dynamic--and necessary forward-looking--exchanges that hold interest groups together, the author is able to develop a theory in which truly collective action is more likely possible than Olson would have us believe." --'Social Science Quarterly', September 1984