Collective Motion, Collective Action, and Collective Decision Making

Resource: Learning Materials

In this lecture on public goods and common pool resources, Dr. Simon Levin characterizes collective behavior as macroscopic pattern that emerges from microscopic interactions. He notes the temporal and spatial challenges of managing common pool resources, and draws on ideas of discount rate and externalities to help explain decision making that erodes these resources. He also highlights the parallels between economic and ecological perspectives on collective action to manage public goods, and identifies cooperation and coercion as to concepts in both disciplines that help explain group behavior. Cooperative action to manage public goods in complex adaptive systems at times requires both modularity and poly-centricity, and he emphasizes the organizational challenges that uncertainty brings to collective action. He concludes by emphasizing that managing common pool resources is a foundational challenge for both human and ecological systems, as well as that patterns of cooperation and collective action will need to be interconnected and scaled up to address global challenges.

  • About the Presenters
    Photo of Simon A. Levin

    Simon A. Levin

    External Advisory Board Member

    Dr. Simon A. Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and the Director of the Center for BioComplexity in the Princeton Environmental Institute. Simon’s research examines the structure and functioning of ecosystems, the dynamics of disease, and the coupling of ecological and socioeconomic systems. Simon is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; and a...

    Read more.
    Photo of Simon A. Levin

    Simon A. Levin

    External Advisory Board Member

    Dr. Simon A. Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and the Director of the Center for BioComplexity in the Princeton Environmental Institute. Simon’s research examines the structure and functioning of ecosystems, the dynamics of disease, and the coupling of ecological and socioeconomic systems. Simon is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; and a Foreign Member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti and the Istituto Lombardo (Milan). With over 500 publications, he served as the editor of the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity and the Princeton Guide to Ecology. His awards include: the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, Margalef Prize for Ecology, the Ecological Society of America’s MacArthur and Eminent Ecologist Awards, the Luca Pacioli Prize (Ca’Foscari University of Venice), the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the National Medal of Science. Simon served as a member of SESYNC’s External Advisory Board.

    External Links:
    https://slevin.princeton.edu
    https://eeb.princeton.edu/people/simon-levin
    https://slevin.princeton.edu

  • Supporting Materials

    Presentation Slides:

    Levin – Collective Motion, Action, & Decision Making.pdf (9.3 MB)

     

    Reading List:
    Levin, S.A. 2014. Public goods in relation to competition, cooperation, and spite. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(Supplement 3), 10838–45. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1400830111.

    Arrow, K. J., Ehrlich, P. R., & Levin, S. A. 2014. Some Perspectives on Linked Ecosystems and Socio-Economic Systems. In Environment and Development Economics: Essays in Honour of Sir Partha Dasgupta, 95–119. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2287329.

Presenters
Date
Share

Related Content