Individual Interests and Collective Action

This book brings together the most important theoretical work of James S. Coleman on problems of collective action.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Collective Decisions: 1. Collective decisions; 2. Beyond Pareto optimality; 3. The possibility of a social welfare function; 4. Social action systems; 5. Why so much stability? Recontracting, trustworthiness and the stability of vote exchanges; 6. Collective decisions in a social system; Part II. Power: 7. Political money; 8. Control of collectivities and the power of a collectivity to act; 9. Constitutional power in experimental health service and delivery systems; 10. Legitimate and illegitimate use of power; 11. Processes of concentration and dispersal of power in social systems; 12. The corporate structure of the economy and its effects on income; Part III. Constitutions: 13. Individual interests and collective action; 14. Inequality, sociology and moral philosophy; 15. Individual rights and the state; 16. Rawls, Nozick and educational equality; Bibliography; Index.