Civic engagement, the leverage effect and the accountable state

Abstract

A classic solution to the problem of public goods (PG) is their provision through a strong state with the power to collect taxes and to mete out penalties for non-compliance. The need for voluntary collective action remains, however, because binding the state to citizen's interests requires the latter's civic engagement. As a public good in its own right, economic theory expects civic engagement to be underprovided. We conduct the first laboratory experiment in which participants can create a socially efficient central sanctioning scheme (representing the accountable state) through a prior stage of voluntary costly actions that are theoretically ruled out for strictly self-interested agents—a social dilemma. Our experimental subjects sustain civic engagement when its cost is modest, suggesting sustainable cooperation in linked social dilemmas perhaps due to a cost-benefit calculus we call “leverage.”