Collective Action Problems: The Problem of Incentives Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the roots of collective action problems. Describe the causes of the tragedy of the commons. Use political examples to explain the tragedy of the commons. Describe the causes of the free rider problem. Use political examples to explain the free rider problem. Identify the logic underlying the prisoner’s dilemma. Collective action problems exist when individuals, acting rationally in pursuit of their self-interest, have incentives to make decisions that are harmful to the interests of others as well as, ultimately, the individual themselves. Collective action problems are everywhere in politics. In classical economic theory, collective action problems are not seen as a natural condition. Classical economic theory holds that individuals will act to benefit themselves and that in doing so they will also benefit others through the “invisible hand.” Adam Smith and Knud Haakonssen, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Remember the logrolling example in Chapter 2 ? Two individuals each have an apple and an orange. One individual really loves oranges; the other, apples. They each have self-interested incentives to trade that which they care for less for that which they desire more. Voilà! One person gives the other an apple, the other gives an orange, and they both are better off even though neither acted with the interest of the other person in mind. Collective action logic comes to the opposite conclusion, one in which individuals acting in their own self-interest can have incentives that lead them to act in ways that harm not only the broader public but also themselves. Collective action problems fall into three main categories: the tragedy of the commons, free riding, and the prisoner’s dilemma. The tragedy of the commons , which results in the depletion of a resource available to all, poses particular threats to global health and welfare. The problem of free riding, wherein individuals not participating in a group activity nonetheless benefit from the activity, makes it difficult to change the status quo. Finally, the prisoner’s dilemma, a situation in which individuals act strategically in ways that ultimately harm themselves, demonstrates why it can be challenging to get allies to work together. The Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (December 1968): 1243–48, doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. The world’s resources are finite. In southern Africa in the 20th century, overhunting nearly led to the extinction of the black rhino. World Wildlife Fund, “Black Rhino,” accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/black-rhino. Many types of fish—including tuna, cod, and halibut, among others—are being pulled out of the ocean at commercially unsustainable levels. World Wildlife Fund, “Overfishing,” accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing. The climate is changing because humans are in effect using up the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. Jouni Paavola, “Climate Change: The Ultimate Tragedy of the Commons?” in Property in Land and Other Resources , eds. Daniel H. Cole and Elinor Ostrom (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012) 417–33. https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/climate-change_0.pdf Whenever there is a resource that anyone within a group can tap, or exploit, that resource is a “commons.” Regarding fish and fishing, the oceans have been a commons. If anyone can withdraw water from a river, that river is a commons; likewise, if anyone can emit air pollution, the atmosphere is a commons. Commercial fishing of tuna and other species can lead to a tragedy of the commons. (credit: “Tuna fish” by Motaz Altahir/Flickr, Public Domain) In each of these cases, the same principle dominates. If anyone has access to the commons—whether that resource is the rhino grazing in Africa, the tuna swimming in the northern Atlantic, or the atmosphere—and that resource is scarce, then every individual has an incentive not only to take what they need but also to take as much as they want. Individuals have this incentive because they can sell this scarce resource (rhino horns, tuna fish) or because they benefit today without consideration of future consequences. If everyone took only what they needed, some renewable resources could become replenished. But if everyone has the incentive to take as much as they can, pretty soon those resources will be depleted. No one can access a resource that has been depleted. If everyone had shared, there may well have been enough to meet everyone’s long-term needs. In the paradox of the tragedy of the commons, those who seek to hoard resources ultimately have less even for themselves. Bluefin tuna, highly valued for its use in sushi, carries a high price, and so commercial fisheries have strong incentives to catch as many of them as they can. Between the 1970s and the early 2000s, the Atlantic population of bluefins declined by an estimated 80 percent due to overfishing, and scientists warned that the species faced extinction unless the tragedy of the commons was averted. Tim Radford, “Scientists Call for Urgent Action to Save Atlantic Tuna,” The Guardian, April 27, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/28/fishing.science; “Popular Fish Species Disappear from Turkey’s Marmara and Black Seas,” Sea Around Us, August 18, 2020, https://www.seaaroundus.org/popular-fish-species-disappear-from-turkeys-marmara-and-black-seas/. Though tuna became extinct in the Black Sea, primarily due to overfishing and other environmental pressures, strictly enforced catch quotas helped avert the tragedy in the Atlantic. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), “Tuna Species Recovering Despite Growing Pressures on Marine Life—IUCN Red List,” September 4, 2021, https://www.iucn.org/news/species/202109/tuna-species-recovering-despite-growing-pressures-marine-life-iucn-red-list. Sadly, there are numerous other examples, such as overfishing in places like China and Chile, the depletion of freshwater resources in places like Australia and Saudi Arabia, and worsening traffic congestion in places like Los Angeles and Cairo, as roads are a scarce resource that can be overconsumed. What Is the Tragedy of the Commons? This TED lesson uses a simple, step-by-step example to explain the tragedy of the commons. Global climate change is perhaps the most pressing example of the tragedy of the commons. Emyr Jones Parry, “The Greatest Threat to Global Security: Climate Change Is Not Merely an Environmental Problem,” UN Chronicle , https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/greatest-threat-global-security-climate-change-not-merely-environmental-problem. Tragedies of the commons could be prevented if everyone—especially those who take the most, whether individuals or countries—took less, but no single person or country has the incentive to do so. The Free Rider Problem At some point you have probably been asked to work on group assignments. You might have asked yourself how much effort you wanted to devote to this team activity. Whether you worked like crazy or did nothing at all, you would get the same grade as everyone else in the group (though of course doing nothing would mean you’d have no control over what that grade might be). So what would you do? The selfish and strategic (or lazy) individual might well say: I’ll do as little as possible. This behavior—accepting a benefit without contributing to its achievement—is an example of the free rider problem . If every member of the group thinks the same way, no work will get done, and your group will receive a well-earned failing grade. Paradoxically, the group as a whole has incentives to work together to obtain their goal, but the individual members of the group do not. In small groups, it is fairly easy to identify and control free riding through mutual peer pressure and the belief that failing to contribute might actually hurt the team’s grade. But in the political world most groups are much larger, and free riding is much more difficult to spot and manage. The logic of free riding creates enormous barriers to political change and complicates efforts to resolve policy problems. Humans have been aware of the free rider problem since antiquity. For a history and analysis, see Russell Hardin and Garrett Cullity, “The Free Rider Problem,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta (Winter 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/free-rider/. Political change is difficult to achieve, given its tendency to favor the status quo. It requires the willingness of political actors like individuals, groups, and parties to devote the time, effort, and other resources sufficient to effect change. Again, climate change provides a useful example. It poses potentially existential threats to the global community. In the past few years, climate change has contributed to extraordinary bushfires in Australia; floods in Indonesia, India, and Europe; and heat waves in the Pacific Northwest and Siberia. These more frequent and intense droughts, storms, and heat waves; rising sea levels; and warming ocean temperatures are wreaking havoc on agriculture, public health, and social stability. Given these threats, it would seem that policy makers around the world would have sufficient incentive to work together to prevent worsening global climate change. Yet, they have not, at least not in ways that have actually led countries to meet their climate change commitments. From the perspective of any individual country’s leaders, climate change is occurring whether or not their country makes any changes or sacrifices. As responding effectively requires changing the status quo, each country’s political leaders may decide to support change rhetorically but not in practice. The Paris Climate Accord of 2015, the agreement of 197 countries to limit global warming, called for countries to take actions to limit average global temperatures to a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Jane A. Leggett, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement: A Summary (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2020). Unfortunately, only a few countries, including Morocco, The Gambia, and possibly India, have taken the steps necessary to do their part. The United States, Russia, and many other countries are “barely trying.” Kieran Mulvaney, “World Climate Change Report Card: These Countries Are Meeting Goals,” National Geographic , September 19, 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-report-card-co2-emissions. Facing an existential crisis, most countries have not stopped free riding. Still, there is reason for hope: free riding can be limited. To suggest that climate change politics are only a matter of free riding would be an oversimplification. Each country has its own political dynamics, and its political leaders face internal pressures and international ambitions. Poorer countries have produced fewer greenhouse gases than richer countries—economic development has been closely linked to the use of the fossil fuels, Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Fossil Fuels,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels. and so these countries argue that they have the right to continue the economic development linked to climate emissions. Richer countries pollute much more per person than poorer countries, and they often find it difficult to break a status quo that favors continued greenhouse gas emissions. True progress on combating climate change will continue to be challenging as long as each country has incentives to free ride on attempts to reduce global climate change. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Imagine this scenario. The police apprehend two individuals they suspect of committing an armed robbery. They have evidence that both suspects are guilty of carrying an unlawful weapon, and though they strongly suspect at least one of the two individuals has committed the more serious crime of armed robbery, they have no direct evidence to back up their suspicions. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Simple scenarios help explain the idea of the prisoner’s dilemma. The police separate the suspects so that they cannot communicate with each other, and then they tell each suspect: We know that one of you is guilty of the robbery, but we don’t know which one. We can prove you are guilty of the weapons charge, so if we can’t find out who is guilty of the robbery, then both of you are going to prison for one year on the weapons charge. However, if you inform on your accomplice (political scientists call this “defecting”; if you do not give away your accomplice, you are said to be “cooperating”—with your fellow suspect, not with the police), we’ll drop the weapons charge, you’ll be released, and your guilty accomplice will serve an eight-year sentence. If you blame each other, we still won’t know which of you actually committed the crime, so you both will be convicted of being an accessory to armed robbery, with a sentence of five years. The exact number of years in the example is not critically important. What is important is that the overall number of years is lowest when both suspects “cooperate” and highest when both “defect.” Dilemma Schema Person A Stay silent (cooperate) Accuse (defect) Person B Stay silent (cooperate) A: 1 year B: 1 year A: 0 years B: 8 years Accuse (defect) A: 8 years B: 0 years A: 5 years B: 5 years Based on this scenario, both suspects would be better off if they remained silent: they would each receive a relatively minimal one-year sentence. You can see the other possible outcomes in . No matter what Person B thinks Person A will do, Person B is better off accusing them. And Person A has the same incentives: no matter what Person B does, Person A has good reasons to accuse Person B. If both people remained silent, they would serve a total of two years in prison. If one accuses the other and the other remains silent, the total prison time would be eight years. If each accuses the other, they will spend a total of 10 years in prison. The “socially” best outcome—if that is defined as the outcome with the minimum total prison time—is for both of the accused to remain silent. However, as each individual has a strong incentive to claim the other is guilty, the predicted outcome is the worst outcome, with 10 total years of prison time. This is the prisoner’s dilemma : individuals, acting strategically in their own self-interest, have incentives that lead them to take actions that result in unnecessarily negative outcomes for both parties. Golden Balls Game Show Illustrates the Prisoner’s Dilemma This clip from the British game show Golden Balls perfectly illustrates the prisoner's dilemma. Even though both players would have benefitted if they had cooperated, they chose not to cooperate and so hurt themselves. Game Show Contestants Overcome the Prisoner’s Dilemma through Strategic Decision-Making In this second clip, the players show how a prisoner's dilemma can be overcome through strategic decision-making. But note that in this scenario the players were allowed to talk with each other so that they could give signals about what their strategies were. There are many real-life examples of prisoner’s dilemmas in politics. Two opposing political candidates may each prefer to run only positive campaign ads, but each fears the other will “go negative” to gain an advantage. Both candidates consequently run negative ads, which tarnish the reputations of each. When tensions rise between two countries over a border dispute, each country may feel pressure to strike first. The country that strikes first may gain an advantage over the country that does not. Collective action problems involve group decisions in which individuals within the group would benefit from cooperating with other group members, but they each have incentives not to cooperate. Individuals acting on these incentives can harm the group and, paradoxically, themselves. In the tragedy of the commons, self-interested individuals have incentives to take as much of a public resource as they can. If enough individuals act on these incentives, the resource will be depleted; at that point, no individual would have access to the resource. Individuals are said to be free riding if they do not contribute to a group goal but still receive the same outcome as the group members who contribute. In a prisoner’s dilemma, the participants would benefit from cooperating with each other, but they have strong incentives to defect. As each participant faces similar incentives, the likely outcome is that every participant is worse off than if they had cooperated. free rider problem when individuals in groups have incentives not to contribute to the group’s goals because they will receive the same outcome whether they contribute or not prisoner’s dilemma a scenario in which two individuals would benefit from cooperating, but each has strong incentives to defect, leaving both individuals worse off than if they had cooperated tragedy of the commons a situation in which individuals have incentives to take as much as they can from a public resource, thereby depleting the resource

Social Sciences


Resolving Collective Action Problems Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain why collective action problems are less common and easier to resolve in small groups. Describe the three main ways to resolve the tragedy of the commons. Describe the reasons why each resolution to a collective action problem is imperfect. Describe the three main ways to address the free-riding problem. Identify the principle solutions to the prisoner’s dilemma. Collective action problems are pernicious. While they are difficult (but not impossible) to eradicate, failure to do so can lead to serious consequences to people’s health and welfare. Each of the three main types of collective action problems is easier to solve, at least in principle, when the problems arise within small groups of people (such as families or tribal units) in which the members know each other well and have to live with each other over a long period of time. If you free ride by not pitching in to keep your living space clean, those living with you are going to notice and probably try to find ways to compel you to do your fair share. If you share a refrigerator with others, you will need to find a way (such as labeling whose food is whose) to prevent a tragedy of the commons in which food vanishes and is not replaced. Should a prisoner’s dilemma scenario arise, the better the “suspects” know each other and the more they trust each other, the more likely it is that they will cooperate. For small groups, the strength of the personal relationships, the power to monitor for infractions, and the ability to provide suitable rewards and enforce appropriate punishments are the keys to avoiding or mitigating collective action problems. Formal mechanisms need not be established. You cannot know the resolution of collective action problems in advance. What happens depends on the decisions that those involved in the resolution make. Testing Solutions to Collective Action Problems: The Evolution of Trust This screenshot shows the first step in one of the simulations you can play at The Evolution of Trust. (credit: screenshot of “The Evolution of Trust” by Nicky Case, CC0 1.0) To see how different choices can influence the outcomes of collective action problems, you can experiment with various scenarios using Canadian game designer Nicky Case’s free online game theory simulator, The Evolution of Trust . But what works for a small group is not sufficient for larger groups, and politics typically involves large groups. In large groups, most individuals will not necessarily trust—or even know—each other, except perhaps through their cultural identifications. If you try to free ride in a group of four, the other group members will definitely notice. If you free ride in a group of 40 million, no one is likely to perceive your absence or lack of effort. Challenges in preventing tragedies of the commons or avoiding the worst outcomes of prisoner’s dilemmas also grow with the numbers of individuals involved. While the classic prisoner’s dilemma example uses two “suspects,” any two actors, including individuals, political parties, or entire countries, can be involved in prisoner’s dilemmas. Collective action problems involving large numbers of people cannot rely on personal relationships; they require other mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement. Remedies for free riding, tragedies of the commons, and prisoner’s dilemmas involving large groups differ, but all three types of problems require political solutions. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions are a key source of the greenhouse gases that are creating a warmer and more variable climate. This map shows per capita Per capita emissions are the total CO 2 emissions for each country divided by the number of people living in that country. CO 2 emissions across countries (view interactive map at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita). Per capita emissions are calculated in order to make fairer apples-to-apples comparisons; that is, you can compare how much a typical person in each country pollutes to how much a typical person in every other country pollutes. More industrialized, wealthier countries tend to emit higher levels of CO 2 than other countries. (credit: “Per Capita CO 2 Emissions” by Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0) The biggest per capita polluters are smaller, oil-producing countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Other heavily populated, affluent countries that are high emitters include the United States, Canada, and Australia, among others. Residents of these countries emit more than 150 times as much CO 2 as do those living in the poorest countries such as the Central African Republic, Chad, and Niger. The four largest political regions based on population—China, the United States, the European Union, and India—contribute more than half of all CO 2 emissions. Each would need to reduce their overall emissions to forestall further climate change. Hannah Ritchie, “Where in the World Do People Emit the Most CO 2 ?” Our World in Data, October 4, 2019, https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2; Johannes Friedrich, Mengpin Ge, and Andrew Pickens, “This Interactive Chart Shows Changes in the World's Top 10 Emitters,” World Resources Institute, December 10, 2020, https://www.wri.org/insights/interactive-chart-shows-changes-worlds-top-10-emitters. If a climate tragedy of the commons is to be averted, each country must bear its fair share of the burden. Resolving Tragedies of the Commons Two remedies for the tragedies of the commons require governmental power. One remedy gives a central institution (the government) the authority to protect the commons through force. If the government has a long-term interest in maintaining the commons and the de facto power to do so, it can prevent individuals from depleting the resource. Alternatively, the government can put a price on (privatize) the resource so that anyone who wants to use the resource must pay for it. In this case, the resource is no longer a “commons” open to all. Think back to the bluefin tuna example. To help prevent their extinction in the Atlantic, the US government instituted a number of requirements for commercial fisheries including that they purchase one of a limited number of permits, abide by catch limits, and report how many tuna they caught. NOAA Fisheries, “Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Permit Shop,” https://hmspermits.noaa.gov/. In an ideal world, the United States would offer just enough permits, with the right catch limits, at the right price, so that as many tuna as possible would be caught without depleting the tuna population, and the permits would be bought by those who value them most. In the ideal world, fisheries would abide by established limits, and their reports would confirm that they had done so. If a commons existed completely within the border of a single country, that country could potentially solve the tragedy on its own. Tuna, however, are highly migratory, and fisheries from many countries seek them; they are part of an international commons. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is an intergovernmental organization established in 1966 to address this international problem. ICCAT had the same basic goals and tools as the United States, but regrettably the organization had “no powers to enforce, no sanctions with which to punish,” and so it was ineffective in protecting the commons, at least in its early years. Richard Black, “Last Rites for a Marine Marvel?” BBC News , last modified October 17, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7040011.stm. The solutions of governmental control or privatization each have their own problems. The government may protect the commons by taking control of it, but the government might use the resources to benefit political elites rather than for the benefit of the community as a whole. And while emperors have reason to preserve the resource, believing their family will rule indefinitely, elected politicians are focused squarely on the short term—the next election—rather than on preserving the resource for their grandchildren’s generation. When the government takes control of the commons, it does not necessarily use the commons wisely. Privatizing a resource has its own pitfalls. Those who are used to exploiting the commons without paying for it (in the example above, the fisheries) will object to making costly what was once free. The more politically powerful the group, the more difficult it is for elected officials to protect the resource through privatization. Elected officials face pressure to offer more permits for greater exploitation at lower prices. As a result, the prices the government sets for the resource are usually too low, and the resource is allowed to be depleted faster than it can be sustained. Even if governmental officials did not face public opposition, privatizing the resource is challenging. If the government sets the prices too low, the resource will be depleted, and if it sets the prices too high, the community will be deprived of a valuable resource. Moreover, the more valuable the resource, the more likely it is that individuals will attempt to exploit it. In that case, preventing exploitation may require heavy policing and harsh punishments. The giant Moa , a bird weighing as much as 500 pounds and standing 12 feet tall, was hunted to extinction by the Maori in New Zealand in the 15th century: a true tragedy of the commons. Virginia Morell, “Why Did New Zealand's Moas Go Extinct?” Science , March 17, 2014, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/why-did-new-zealands-moas-go-extinct. Fortunately, the Maori were able to turn to other sources of food. Today’s tragedy of the commons challenges, like global climate change, are much greater than a single bird for a single group. The Moa was hunted to extinction in a tragedy of the commons. (credit: “Hunting Moa” by Joseph Smit/Extinct Monsters by Rev. H. N. Hutchinson/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Historically, businesses that emitted CO 2 polluted for free. To reduce pollution, governments can put a price on it: “Every unit of pollution you emit will cost you this much.” This price is typically referred to as a carbon tax . Adele Cecile Morris, Ian Parry, and Roberton C. Williams, Implementing a US Carbon Tax: Challenges and Debates (New York: Routledge, 2015). doi:10.4324/9781315747682. The idea is that if you make it costly to pollute, people will pollute less, but this will be true only if the tax is high enough to coerce polluters to substantially reduce their emissions. Governments find it hard to impose these taxes because those being taxed resist. Because so many human activities create a “carbon footprint,” virtually everyone would see higher prices on their electric or gas bills, as well as at the grocery store and all the other places they shop. High carbon taxes are almost certain to produce beneficial long-term consequences for human health and welfare, and the short-term costs to individuals and businesses can be mitigated. “What Is a Carbon Tax?” Tax Policy Center, accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-carbon-tax. Still, those costs are immediate, and the benefits are in the future. As a result, countries have had enormous difficulty in setting carbon taxes high enough to prevent additional global warming. Benjamin Storrow, “Carbon Prices Are Too Low to Reduce Emissions,” Scientific American , September 20, 2018, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-prices-are-too-low-to-reduce-emissions/. You can find a 2020 world map of carbon pricing plans here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_tax_world_map.png. Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom proposed a relatively effective solution to the tragedy of the commons that relies neither on a sovereign nor on prices. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Ostrom suggested that effective solutions can arise from the communities that use a resource once they recognize the commons problem and their mutual interest in resolving it. Community members are more likely than distant governments to understand the problem and to have a stake in remedying it. When Ostrom identified communities around the world that have come together to solve such problems, she observed two necessary details that allow these community solutions to work. First, the community must engage in collective decision-making so that all relevant interests can participate. Second, the rules the community makes must be clear so that members know what is allowed and what is not. If these conditions are in place, the decisions the community makes are likely to be wise and enforceable, as community members can monitor each other to prevent cheating. Ostrom found evidence supporting these principles in places ranging from the “Japanese villages of Hirano and Nagaike, the huerta irrigation mechanism between Valencia, Murcia and Alicante in Spain, and the zanjera irrigation community in the Philippines.” Flavio Felice, “Elinor Ostrom and the Solution to the Tragedy of the Commons,” American Enterprise Institute, July 27, 2012, https://www.aei.org/articles/elinor-ostrom-and-the-solution-to-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/. Since Ostrom’s examples all involve small communities in which members know each other and have roughly equal power, it’s unclear whether her findings point the way to a solution that can be implemented at the global level. In the absence of a solution like the one Ostrom proposes, communities tend to turn to a sovereign to impose restrictions or set prices. Since there is no global sovereign, the climate change crisis remains an especially challenging collective action problem. Resolving Free Riding Problems The best way to resolve the free rider problem is to disincentivize free riders. One powerful tool to discourage free riding is to keep groups small. Because in politics groups are usually large, they must develop other mechanisms to identify free riders and to deter their behavior. These mechanisms come with a cost: the group must devote resources to monitoring and punishing unwanted behavior, and group members need to subject themselves to some form of surveillance. Every country needs to collect taxes to fund government programs. If no one paid taxes, roads would never be repaved, safety regulations could not be enforced, the military would be unfunded, and the government could not provide disaster relief, just to name a handful of the many services that taxes allow the government to deliver. Still, few citizens would voluntarily send a check to pay their fair share of taxes unless they had strong incentives to do so. The most basic incentive? Failure to pay taxes is a crime, punishable by fines and imprisonment. If you know there is some chance you will be caught and violators are punished, this may provide sufficient incentive not to free ride. In addition to monitoring and fines, to prevent individuals or corporations from evading their obligations by moving their money into other jurisdictions, countries try to coordinate their tax policies. In 2021, the G-7 nations—a group of the world’s largest economies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the United States—did just that, agreeing to a coordinated global minimum corporate tax of no less than 15 percent. Silvia Amaro, Joanna Tan, and Emma Newburger, “G-7 Nations Reach Historic Deal on Global Tax Reform,” CNBC , June 5, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/05/g-7-nations-reach-historic-deal-on-global-tax-reform.html. In the United States, the likelihood that a citizen’s taxes will be audited has dropped substantially in recent decades, especially among high-income individuals, as the federal government has devoted fewer resources to the Internal Revenue Service, the agency responsible for collecting taxes. Robert A Weinberger, “The IRS Data Book Tells a Story of Shrinking Staff, Fewer Audits, and Less Customer Service,” Tax Policy Center, June 7, 2019, https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/irs-data-book-tells-story-shrinking-staff-fewer-audits-and-less-customer-service. While most citizens pay the taxes they owe, free riding deprives the US Treasury of some $400 billion, about 15 percent of all taxes owed, each year. Internal Revenue Service, “The Tax Gap,” accessed July 14, 2021, https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/the-tax-gap. To reduce the amount of free riding, the US government would need to devote additional resources to monitoring and enforcement. Monitoring and penalties are not the only way to prevent free riding. Another approach is to create strong social solidarity. Political organizations and governments seek to create these bonds of common connection. Through civic education and social signaling, they send the message that citizens should pay their taxes not just because they will be punished if they don’t; they should pay them because that is what good, patriotic citizens do. In the countries with the highest tax compliance—that is, with the lowest rates of free riding—citizens generally pay their taxes because they believe the tax system is fair and that it is a civic duty to pay your taxes, and because there is widespread faith that other citizens are also paying their fair share. Larissa Batrancea et al. “Trust and Power as Determinants of Tax Compliance across 44 Nations,” Journal of Economic Psychology 74 (October 2019): 102191, doi:10.1016/j.joep.2019.102191. It also helps if the government is competent so that citizens can see that their taxes are being used responsibly. The tragedy of the commons and the prospect of free riding are especially relevant for slow-growing crises like climate change. It is unlikely that the Maori knew that they were literally hunting the Moa to extinction, gradually eliminating a valuable source of food: each year, there were fewer birds to hunt, but maybe imperceptibly so, until the Moa vanished. Like the Maori, many countries are slow to address the problem of climate change, even though the changes appear to be accelerating and creating irreversible damage. United Nations, “Flagship UN Study shows Accelerating Climate Change on Land, Sea and in the Atmosphere,” March 10, 2020, https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059061. Resolving Prisoner’s Dilemmas Prisoner’s dilemmas create risks that can lead to more immediate but no less catastrophic outcomes. When two countries are at the brink of war, each might believe that it is more beneficial to attack than to wait—that is, to defect rather than to cooperate. The simplest solution to the prisoner’s dilemma is for both participants to cooperate rather than to defect; however, they are likely to do so only under certain conditions. A participant is least likely to defect when they know that the other participant will punish them if they do. If they each know they will be punished if they defect, then they are more likely to remain silent. Preventing or ending prisoner’s dilemmas requires that the participants know they will be punished if they defect, that a third party will enforce cooperation, or that the participants have mutual trust. Once one of the parties defects in a prisoner’s dilemma setting, it is not easy to get the participants to cooperate later. As in the persistent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, cases where any two groups are locked in intractable disagreements exemplify how tit-for-tat retaliation dominates any possibility of mutual agreement. The two parties have learned not to trust each other. Once that happens, rebuilding trust is difficult. It is easier to lose trust than to gain it. In a prisoner’s dilemma, once a party has defected, the other party might well assume that the party that defected can never be trusted. Avoiding this outcome requires a third party that can enforce cooperation or punish those who defect to induce future cooperation. Collective action problems are common in large groups, and they are difficult to solve. The tragedy of the commons can be prevented if some authority can restrict exploitation of the resource or if the commons can be privatized in a way that prevents the resource from being depleted. Free riding can be avoided through monitoring that can detect free riders and sanctions that can punish them. Creating social solidarity so that individuals believe that they should not free ride can also be important. Unless the participants in a prisoner’s dilemma trust each other and know that they will need to work together again in the future, the expectation is that the outcome of the dilemma will harm both players. Avoiding this outcome requires a third party that can enforce cooperation or punish those who defect to induce future cooperation. Almond, Gabriel A., and Sidney Verba. 1965. The Civic Culture . Boston: Little, Brown. Carlos, Roberto F. 2018. “Late to the Party: On the Prolonged Partisan Socialization Process of Second-Generation Americans.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics 3 (2): 381–408. Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. Jennings, M. Kent, Laura Stoker, and Jake Bowers. 2009. “Politics across Generations: Family Transmission Reexamined.” The Journal of Politics 71 (3): 782–99. Kuhn, Steven. 2019. “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/. Ogbar, Jeffrey Ogbonna Green. 2007. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. carbon tax a fee imposed on the use of fossil fuels based on the amount of carbon dioxide that use emits into the atmosphere

Social Sciences


Introduction On May 13, 2013, thousands of people crowded into the Minnesota state capitol for the Minnesota Senate vote on a same-sex marriage bill. On that day, the bill became law. (credit: “Crowd during the same sex marriage vote in the Minnesota Senate” by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) This chapter examines the meaning of civil rights as a legal concept, how civil rights are defined in constitutions around the world, and which civil rights governments and institutions recognize and protect. It explores how individuals and groups, like Me Too and other social justice movements, can raise public awareness and work to change policies and improve legal protections surrounding issues of discrimination and unfair treatment under the law, and it shines a light on the important role of government and institutions that maintain and challenge the status quo. Civil rights issues are of particular concern for less powerful groups, including religious, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities (or anyone not seen as the majority in power). Often, civil rights change is rooted in local issues that become global, and social media provides new and accelerated pathways to equitable legislation and policy. The chapter draws on historical and current examples to provide a broad overview of past and ongoing civil rights abuses and to illustrate the methods people use to work for civil rights change.

Social Sciences


Civil Rights and Constitutionalism Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define civil rights and distinguish between civil rights and civil liberties. Explain why voting rights are one of the most essential and most contested of all civil rights. Discuss the ways in which constitutional and legal structures determine which civil rights states recognize and protect. Analyze why civil rights definitions and protections vary in different countries and change over time. Explain the relationships between positive and negative rights and between positive rights and civil rights. Civil rights are government guarantees of equal protection under the law, regardless of membership in a group based on a shared characteristic such as race, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, or ability. The government is tasked with acting to protect members of groups who have been discriminated against because of their group membership alone. An issue becomes a civil rights concern when action is required because a group’s rights are being violated or denied. If the government fails to act to protect that group or if its actions are inadequate, people outside the government may act to urge the government to take greater formal action to remedy the situation. Chapter 4 discussed civil liberties. Civil rights and civil liberties are related; however, their meanings differ in important ways. Civil liberties are freedoms from restriction. They are limits on the government’s ability to restrict individuals. The government cannot stop you from something that you have the liberty to do. A right is something to which a person is entitled. Civil rights are entitlements that governments must step in to protect for certain groups who are suffering or have suffered discrimination. In the United States, the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution define the civil liberties—the individual freedoms—that the government must respect. These amendments are known as the Bill of Rights . Some examples of civil liberties mentioned in the Bill of Rights include “the freedom of speech, or of the press” ( 1st Amendment ); “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” ( 4th Amendment ); and the right against “excessive bail” and “cruel and unusual punishment” ( 8th Amendment ). Civil rights have to do with issues of equal treatment and are those rights that government institutions must protect and enforce via legislative action, judicial interpretation, and executive implementation. “Civil Rights,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_rights. They may include political rights, such as voting, running for office, or serving on a jury; employment and employment-related opportunities, such as equal employment opportunities and equal pay; and legal rights, such as the right to file a civil suit. Opportunities and limitations based on group membership have consequences in various realms including politics, society, the economy, education, and the law. Groups are often differentiated based on various categories of group identification including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, economic status, etc. Voting as a Civil Right As discussed in more detail later in the chapter, voting is a civil rights issue in the United States. Throughout its history, the United States has restricted voting access to certain groups, culminating in several historic movements and protests to expand and protect voting rights. The vote is one of the most powerful ways the people can use their voice to effect change and be heard. When a government denies a group the right to vote, it effectively takes away their political voice. The less power the members of a group have to make their voices heard, the more help they will need—if not from the government, then from the political action of other groups. As Boston College professor Kay Lehman Schlozman , Harvard University professor Sidney Verba , and University of California professor Henry E. Brady put it, “Public officials cannot consider voices they do not hear.” Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 6. Though the US Constitution has been amended several times to expand suffrage —the right to vote—by removing barriers based on race ( 15th Amendment ), gender ( 19th Amendment ), and age ( 26th Amendment ), some stakeholders in the United States still seek to prevent certain groups from exercising the right to vote. Their efforts are referred to as voter suppression . Civil rights issues vary around the world, and the history of voting rights in New Zealand, a Pacific country very different from the United States, for example, contrasts with the history of voting rights in the United States. Traditionally, the New Zealand government has extended more rights to its Indigenous people than it has to people who emigrated later. Indigenous Maori men received the right to vote in New Zealand before the government extended that right to all men over the age of 21 in the country who were British subjects (at the time New Zealand was a British colony), and New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote. Neill Atkinson, “Voting Rights,” Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/voting-rights. The United States did not grant women the right to vote until almost 30 years later. Despite the ratification of several amendments to the US Constitution that were intended to guarantee suffrage to more people, Native Americans, for example, continue to be denied the right to vote even today in certain places in the United States because of lack of documentation and identification. Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, “How the Native American Vote Continues to Be Suppressed,” Human Rights Magazine 45, no. 1 (February 9, 2020) , https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/voting-rights/how-the-native-american-vote-continues-to-be-suppressed/. In 1971, the United States lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 (26th Amendment). Some countries, such as Austria and Brazil, have lowered the voting age even further. Following a 2000–2005 trial run, Austrians as young as 16 are now eligible to vote in all local, regional, and national elections. Mathilde Mostrup, “Voting Rights for Debate in Europe,” in Votes at 16 (Copenhagen: The Danish Youth Council), http://www.cje.org/descargas/cje4965.pdf. What these examples tell us is that, like many other civil rights issues, suffrage is not a rigid institution, but one that can change due to internal and external forces. A country’s suffrage laws are an extension, and oftentimes an expression, of that country’s sovereignty; the uniqueness of voting laws and who qualifies to vote contribute to the fabric that makes up a political culture, a concept that will be considered later in the chapter. Participants in the 1965 Civil Rights March walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest voter suppression and racial segregation. (credit: “ Participants, some carrying American flags, marching in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 ” by Peter Pettus/Library of Congress) Constitutionalism and Civil Rights The US Constitution first guaranteed a right to vote for some citizens with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which declares that any state denying eligible citizens the right to vote will lose representation in Congress. In Chapter 4: Civil Liberties , you read about constitutionalism , which is “the doctrine that governs the legitimacy of government action.” Maru Bazezew, “Constitutionalism,” Mizan Law Review 3, no. 2 (September 2009): 358–369. In other words, constitutionalism reminds us that governments must respect the rule of law and the limits placed on government power. One way to understand constitutionalism is to think of it as the role a country’s written constitution plays in maintaining the rule of law and a country’s political culture. India’s constitution “Fundamental Rights,” Know India, https://knowindia.india.gov.in/profile/fundamental-rights.php. references freedom from caste-based discrimination and the freedom to preserve and speak languages, specific rights that may not be applicable in other countries because India has its own specific political culture. Mauritania’s constitution also references language. It declares Arabic the official language but recognizes three other national languages. The Mauritanian constitution also emphasizes universal suffrage and specifically states that “the law favors the equal access of women and of men to the electoral mandate and elective functions.” Mauritania’s Constitution of 1991 with Amendments through 2012 , trans. Maria del Carmen Gress (Getzville, NY: William S. Hein & Co., 2012), https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mauritania_2012.pdf. The 1776 US Declaration of Independence states that all people have “unalienable rights” that they possess at birth that no government can take away. The unalienable rights to which people are entitled include the Declaration’s most famous phrase: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Declaration of Independence has served as a model for contemporary independence efforts, and international organizations have incorporated the rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence into their own formal work to promote these rights, as typified by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations General Assembly, December 10, 1948, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. Since 1948, the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (also discussed in Chapter 15) and 30 of its articles have inspired billions of people globally. Some of the human rights the Universal Declaration recognizes include protections against slavery (Article 4) and forced marriage (Article 16), freedom of movement within one’s own country (Article 13), the right to participate in government, (Article 21), freedom to join a union (Article 23), and the right to hold a nationality (Article 15). Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a common standard for human rights definitions and protections around the world. As discussed in Chapter 4 , constitutions can include positive rights and/or negative rights . According to the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics , “Negative rights, such as the right to privacy, the right not to be killed, or the right to do what one wants with one’s property, are rights that protect some form of human freedom or liberty . . . positive rights are ‘positive’ in the sense that they claim for each person the positive assistance of others in fulfilling basic constituents of human well-being like health and education.” Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, and Michael J. Meyer, “Rights,” Issues in Ethics 3, no. 1 (Winter 1990), https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/rights/. Negative rights often correspond with civil liberties—what the government cannot restrict—and positive rights correspond with civil rights—what the government must protect. The constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia, for example, prohibits child and forced labor, the death penalty, torture, censorship, and double jeopardy and discrimination based on “sex, race, colour of skin, national and social origin, political and religious beliefs, property and social status.” North Macedonia (Republic of’s) Constitution of 1991 with Amendments through 2011 (Getzville, NY: William S. Hein & Co.), https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Macedonia_2011.pdf?lang=en. Because they are expressed as prohibitions, these are considered negative rights. The Comparative Constitutions Project compiles, compares, and analyzes constitutions from around the world. The project’s sample ranges from the constitutions of Brunei and Thailand, which include only two individual and political rights, to those of Portugal, Serbia, and Ecuador, which include 87, 88, and 89 rights, respectively. “Constitutional Rankings,” Comparative Constitutions Project, https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/ccp-rankings/. Similarly, the Cato Institute conducts an annual survey of political rights known as the Human Freedom Index . It describes human freedom as “a social concept that recognizes the dignity of individuals and is defined here as . . . the absence of coercive constraint.” Drawing on data from 162 countries and using a zero to 10 scale, in 2020 the Cato Institute identified New Zealand as having the most rights and protections of freedoms in the world and Syria as having the least. Ian Vasquez and Fred McMahon, “The Human Freedom Index 2020,” Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2020. These rankings reflect global variations in how people conceptualize civil rights, despite the UDHR and other statements about human dignity. Constitutions play a crucial role in defining which civil rights a country recognizes and claims to protect, but what about enforcement? What if a country’s constitution contains certain protections, but the majority does not implement them? The section that follows discusses the relationship between majority and minority groups and the implications for civil rights. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the role of government and political institutions in enforcing civil rights. Civil rights are government guarantees of equal protection under the law, regardless of membership in a group based on a shared characteristic such as race, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, or ability. Whenever a basic right is denied to a group based on a shared characteristic, a civil rights issue exists. In the United States, voting is an example of a civil rights issue because certain groups, like women and Black people, have historically been denied the right to vote. In response to changing views, the US Constitution has been amended to expand the right to vote (suffrage) over time. Constitutionalism is a way of measuring how well a country follows or meets the expectations of its constitution. The countries of the world define and protect civil rights in different ways, but the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has become an influential standard. Rights may be expressed as positive rights or negative rights. Positive rights are opportunities and abilities that rely on the support or acceptance by others (i.e., you can support my rights by complying with them). Negative rights, on the other hand, refer to those freedoms no government or persons may restrict. civil liberties limits on the government’s ability to restrict individual freedoms; in the United States, these are mentioned in the Bill of Rights civil rights government guarantees of equal protection under the law, regardless of membership in a group based on a shared characteristic, such as race, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, or ability constitutionalism the set of political values and norms derived from a country’s constitution that serve as the basis for a government’s authority negative rights rights stated as freedoms the government cannot infringe upon positive rights rights stated as freedoms the government must protect suffrage the right to vote, which is a civil right in the United States Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) a 1948 document created by the United Nations General Assembly after World War II that outlines a definition of human rights; established global standards that have since been adopted by many countries

Social Sciences


Political Culture and Majority-Minority Relations Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Analyze how a country’s political culture affects which civil rights it recognizes and defends. Describe the relationship between minority and majority groups. Discuss the role the majority plays in determining how civil rights function in a society. Persons with physical and mental disabilities are an example of a group that has experienced widespread discrimination, in part due to a lack of adequate government protections. Absent public policy forbidding it, governments have denied these individuals access to public accommodations, including access to public buildings and programs, while private businesses and other social and educational institutions have also limited opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Challenging these discriminatory policies is now a key focus among civil rights movements around the world. The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) has compiled a massive list of constitutions that provide protections for those with disabilities. “International Laws,” Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, https://dredf.org/legal-advocacy/international-disability-rights/international-laws/. This list includes the constitutions of dozens of developed and developing countries ranging from Zimbabwe and the Gambia to Cambodia and Turkey. The DREDF contains the text of Zimbabwe’s constitution, which specifically references “physical disability” as one of the protected characteristics of its citizens. In other words, the constitution clearly states that it is illegal and unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of physical disability. The United States Constitution does not include any explicit protections for individuals with disabilities. Instead, the United States has sought to address disability rights through federal laws like the Rehabilitation Act (1973), which created affirmative action in government hiring for people with disabilities, Shirley Wilcher, “The Rehabilitation Act of 1973: 45 Years of Activism and Progress,” Insight into Diversity , September 17, 2018, https://www.insightintodiversity.com/the-rehabilitation-act-of-1973-45-years-of-activism-and-progress/. and the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), a landmark legislative act that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of ability and offered sweeping changes that made it easier for people with disabilities to access services, transportation, buildings, and employment. US Department of Justice, “Introduction to the ADA,” https://www.ada.gov/ada_intro.htm. The United Kingdom, China, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Brazil, and Qatar have handled disability rights in a similar fashion: they have used congressional or parliamentary legislation to create national standards and provisions to protect the rights of those with disabilities. This bus platform in Brazil has special accommodations for those with differing abilities. (credit: “Sistema RIT de Curitiba, Brasil” by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Mariordo/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) People with disabilities are one example of a political minority . A minority can be a group of people or a single person, and its definition changes based on how it is used in different countries. Lewis M. Killian, “What or Who Is a ‘Minority’?” Michigan Sociological Review , no. 10 (Fall 1996): 18–31. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights defines ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities as, “any group of persons which constitutes less than half of the population in the entire territory of a State whose members share common characteristics of culture, religion or language, or a combination of any of these.” “Concept of a Minority: Mandate Definition,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Minorities/SRMinorities/Pages/ConceptMinority.aspx According to Arizona State University professor Michael Hechter and Indiana Univeristy professor and director of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) Dina Okamoto, most countries “contain several culturally distinct groups whose language, religion, tradition, and historical experiences are not shared and often are at odds with one another.” Michael Hechter and Dina Okamoto, “Political Consequences of Minority Group Formation,” Annual Review of Political Science 4, no. 1 (June 2001): 189–215. Civil rights function in society based on how the majority interacts with the minority—who gets to decide whose rights are protected, and how those protections are enforced? These determinations shape which freedoms and opportunities are reserved for the majority and which are also granted to and protected for the minority. The reality is that those in the political majority use their power to secure the best outcomes for themselves. Those enjoying majority group membership often use their influence on elections to define the parameters of the majority group—who will lead, and how will they use the power they have been given? Majority and Minority Political Cultures As discussed in Chapter 6: The Fundamentals of Group Political Activity , each country, along with the subnational states within it, has its own unique political culture —the ways in which traditions and cultural values create that country’s specific political system. A country’s particular combination of history, geography, religious practices, conflict, and other identities contributes to creating its specific political culture. Political culture plays an important role in determining which civil rights the country protects and how well it protects them, and those with the most power are most able to influence the culture. Consider Qatar, a Muslim-majority, petroleum-exporting gulf monarchy known for providing the majority of its citizens with a high standard of living (but providing far less for the millions from mostly Asian and African countries who work in Qatar). Consistent with the country’s majority political culture, homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, and punishment for sodomy can range from flogging and imprisonment to death. Max Bearak and Darla Cameron, “Here Are the 10 Countries Where Homosexuality May Be Punished by Death,” Washington Post , June 16, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/13/here-are-the-10-countries-where-homosexuality-may-be-punished-by-death-2/. There are no legal protections for LGBTQ+ people. Qatar now faces the challenge of balancing its conservative political culture with its role as the 2022 host of the FIFA World Cup , during which thousands of people with cultural values that differ from the majority values in Qatar will visit the country. The Qatari government has released statements welcoming gay fans and ensuring their safety but explicitly discouraging public displays of affection and/or having sex. Patrick Kelleher, “Gay Fans Are Welcome at Qatar World Cup — Just as Long as They Don’t Have Sex,” Pink News, September 27, 2019, https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/27/qatar-world-cup-2022-fifa-anti-gay-sex-homosexuality/. While many of the people visiting Qatar for the World Cup will be coming from countries where the political culture is very different from the political culture in Qatar, attitudes toward LGBTQ+ individuals in those countries—like Germany, England, Croatia, and South Korea—were not always so tolerant. Political cultures can change, often through a combination of the work of people in nongovernment groups and movements within government institutions, and this change can affect civil rights protections. Political Culture and Civil Rights Change One of the biggest changes in civil rights policy in the United States came in 2015 when, in Obergefell v. Hodges , the Supreme Court struck down state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage . The ruling came after decades of hard work to change the political culture of the United States to one that would recognize and protect the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. For most of American history, same-sex couples were denied the right to marry. The Supreme Court ruling that effectively secured the right to marry for same-sex couples was the culmination of over 50 years of organizing, protests, and lobbying. Revelers hold a giant rainbow flag outside the United States Supreme Court to celebrate the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges , which declared that the US Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry. (credit: “DSC_0135” by Jordan Uhl/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) According to John Kowal of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, the push to change federal denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples began in earnest during the 1996 presidential campaign in response to a court case in Hawaii where, in 1993, the state supreme court had ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was in violation of the state constitution. John F. Kowal, “The Improbable Victory of Marriage Equality,” Brennan Center for Justice, September 29, 2015, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/improbable-victory-marriage-equality. The sharing of power between states and a national government, known as federalism , creates a unique culture that sets the United States apart from most of the world (for more on federalism, see Chapter 13: Governing Regimes ). While many other countries are organized along federal lines, including Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, and Russia, among others, only the United States Constitution includes provisions that clarify states’ rights compared to the national government (9th and 10th Amendments). Since states can create their own statutes and policies as long as they are not in conflict with the US Constitution or congressional law, each of the United States can, theoretically, enact policies that are in direct contrast with a bordering state’s policies. That each state and region of the country has a different political culture and different people in power became all too clear in the 2000s and 2010s, when most states passed their own laws on same-sex marriage, resulting in a hodge-podge of laws and policies where, for example, same-sex marriage was banned in Texas but legal in neighboring Oklahoma. Greg Zwiers, “LGBT Laws Differ from State to State,” Iowa State Daily , October 17, 2014, https://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/student_life/article_e86cc4f4-5592-11e4-9ff3-2349dcd05dab.html. Though the issue of sex-based discrimination and marriage rose to public prominence in Hawaii, LGBTQ+ and civil rights–related interest groups and lobbying were rippling across the country, resulting in citizen referenda, ballot propositions, legislation, and court decisions. Much of the momentum was driven by a combination of public and private advocacy work to change the national conversation on LGBTQ+ inclusion. Attitudes on the topic dovetailed generally with how people viewed homosexuality. “Fifty Years Since Stonewall: The Change in Public Opinion,” Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 2019, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/fifty-years-stonewall-change-public-opinion. In a 2004 national poll of Americans, less than 40 percent of respondents approved of same-sex marriage, but by 2019 that percentage had grown to more than 60 percent. “Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage,” Pew Research Center, May 14, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/. The AIDS epidemic moved from the margins to mainstream American life during the 1980s and 1990s, and media coverage of the epidemic was partially responsible for the shift in attitudes toward homosexuality. Representation in popular culture also played a role, with popular films and television shows like Philadelphia , Queer Eye, The L-Word , and Will & Grace featuring gay and lesbian characters and personalities. According to California State University professor Jeremiah Garretson , one major reason for the shift in acceptance of gay culture is that more Americans than ever know someone who identifies as lesbian or gay; “that increase in interpersonal contact is the major part of the reason attitude change has been so rapid,” Garretson said. John Wilkens, “What’s Behind the Gay Rights Attitude Shift?” The San Diego Union-Tribune , April 4, 2015, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-public-attitudes-gay-rights-2015apr04-story.html. In November 2003, Massachusetts became the first US state to legalize same-sex marriage after the state supreme court found that prohibiting same-sex couples from being able to marry violated the state constitution. Kowal, “Improbable Victory.” In its landmark 2015 decision, the United States Supreme Court declared that “the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person . . . couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. Same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556. The violation of a group’s civil rights demands action to ensure equal treatment. In the case of same-sex marriage in the United States, it was only after years of people engaging in activism and bringing lawsuits that public opinion and government policies changed. Wherever political minorities lack adequate representation in elected office, they must live with the decisions of the majority, which may not take into account minority concerns. Majority theory, or majoritarianism , describes the roles and responsibilities of the majority and who has the power to shape the rules of government and society. Oxford Reference Online , “Majoritarianism,” https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100127772. Those who have the power to shape society can use that power to help recognize and protect minority rights; however, those who have power tend to use the tools at their disposal to keep it, and keeping it may mean suppressing minorities. For example, when the majority elects legislators who represent them, those legislators tend to enact policies that secure the majority’s status and often deny opportunities to minority group members. These policies can make it difficult for those in the minority to participate in the political process itself—for example, by voting or running for public office. In this way, the majority ensures its ongoing power. Political culture refers to the ways in which a country’s traditions and cultural values create that country’s specific political system. A country’s political culture, the implementation of its constitution, and power dynamics between majority and minority groups all affect civil rights. Changes in a country’s political culture can impact civil rights. Majorities have the power to either protect or discriminate against the minorities in a society. The majority can have a major influence on whether the government fulfills its obligation to affirm and protect civil rights. majoritarianism a feature of government that emphasizes the role of majorities and how the strength of the majority will shapes political decisions, outcomes, and division of resources Obergefell v. Hodges a landmark Supreme Court ruling that ended state bans on same-sex marriage equality and recognized the right to marriage as a federal right for same-sex couples political culture the idea that a country’s politics and policies derive in large part from its unique political culture, which is itself a product of history, geography, religion, and other characteristics political minority any group of individuals sharing some characteristic(s) or trait(s) who have relatively less power than and whose rights may not be protected automatically by a majority group in power

Social Sciences