The Relationship Between Collective Action and Heterogeneity: Insights from the Analysis of Institutions for Collective Action

Globally, institutions for collective action (ICAs) have been instrumental in promoting participatory and community-based self-governance. The institutions have especially been studied in contexts where people get organise for addressing a common governance issue. Cooperative behaviour among human beings, and the role of institutions and norms in influencing them has also been a key concept of scholarly inquiry within social sciences. The institutional design, and polity of self-governance within ICAs have been well recorded. However, the topic of how heterogeneity of actors impacts the functioning, capacity, effectiveness, and resilience of the institutions is highly contested, and understudied. This qualitative study is based on a classic literature review of theoretical and empirical literature on collective action in different contexts. The study finds that few studies have explicitly looked at the role of socio-cultural and economic heterogeneity in collective action situation, and others measure the impacts through proxies like trust and social cohesion. Both strands of studies show mixed results. The analysis of the study differentiates between situations where the heterogeneity is analysed with respect to the internal functioning of the group, and in conditions where the larger context within which the group is situated in is also taken into consideration. The analysis is substantiated within similar research in other context, where group-based collective action is analysed—from behaviour psychology, organisation behaviour studies, etc. The study confirms that there might have been some oversight in the conceptualization and measurement of the interaction of heterogeneity for two reasons. First, while heterogeneity is complex, dynamic, and multi-layered, the theoretical conceptualization is rather simplistic. Second, impacts and interplays of heterogeneity might be visible over a longer period, which hasn’t been the focus of studies on collective action. The study concludes by outlining an agenda for future research (with the case of Nepal) on heterogeneity in collective action situation. Here, integrating the key findings, the study demonstrates how the dynamic conceptualisation of heterogeneity can be operationalised through a longitudinal study with a macro-micro-macro-orientation.