Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Wages of Altruism: Solidarity and the Organizational Structure of American Communes

集体行动的利己主义理论假设，这种行动是在个人追求自身利益的过程中产生的。社区组织为这一观点提出了一个具有挑战性的难题，因为许多社区组织在没有工资或罚款等正式激励措施的情况下实现了非常高的合作水平。本文从公社的团结问题入手，提出了一种非正式社会控制理论，将群体团结解释为成员之间基本社会交换的产物。它模拟了组织结构的各个方面，这些方面制约和协调这些交换，导致模拟群体中的顺从、渎职或派系主义。在宏观层面上，它将把组织生态学的动态模型与最近的实验工作结合起来，研究交换关系中的“退出选择”。这两个框架的婚姻将在人口生态学的宏观模型中的群体过程的微观模型，通过选择模拟代理加入和退出群体。为了检验这些正式模型的适用性，我们将把预测的结果与观察到的1609年至1997年间成立的2,000多个社区组织的解散情况进行比较。虽然该数据库包括1 200多个市镇的记录，但该项目将通过访问几个历史档案和调查当代市镇来扩大和验证现有数据库。除了测试组织团结的双层理论外，该项目还将提供近四个世纪以来社区组织结构趋势和人口动态的前所未有的记录。

Egoistic theories of collective action assume that such actions arise in the course of individuals pursuing their own interests. Communal organizations present a challenging puzzle for this view, as many of these organizations achieve very high levels of cooperation without formal incentives, such as wages or fines. This dissertation begins with the problem of solidarity in communes and provides a theory of informal social control, explaining group solidarity as a product of elementary social exchanges between members. It models aspects of organizational structure that condition and coordinate these exchanges, leading to compliance, malfeasance, or factionalism in simulated groups. On a macro-level, it will integrate dynamic models of organizational ecology with recent experimental work examining "exit options" in exchange relations. The marriage of these two frameworks will situate the micro-model of group processes in a macro-model of population ecology, as linked by choices of simulated agents to join and exit groups. To test the fit of these formal models, predicted outcomes will be compared against observed dissolutions of over 2,000 communal organizations, founded between 1609 and 1997. While the database includes records of over 1,200 communes, this project will expand and validate the existing database through visits to several historical archives and a survey of contemporary communes. In addition to testing a two-tiered theory of organizational solidarity, this project will provide an unprecedented record of structural trends and population dynamics for communal organizations over a span of nearly four centuries.