Thinking about it now I'm surprised that Mancur Olsen doesn't get mentioned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
as his theory is precisely about how when collective action is difficult people don't do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
as his theory is precisely about how when collective action is difficult people don't do it.
It's not free rider but coordination costs -- the same reason democracies are at a disadvantage relative to authoritarian regimes.
Transaction cost ecomomics has been studying this and other transactions features since before 1965. Key to their methodology and success is comparing actual to actual alternatives, instead of actual to imagined.
Are they? There aren't very many examples of successful authoritarian regimes. Singapore and China?
And most problems aren't coordination problems to begin with. How do you get someone to grow food and someone else to build housing? Pay them for it, so the person growing food has money to buy housing and vice versa. It operates perfectly well as a decentralized system.
The primary fault in governments is the principal-agent problem. The government is supposed to be acting in the interest of the people but ends up acting in the interest of government officials or special interests. Democracies are not immune from this at all but dictatorships are certainly no better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network
Has a meaningful voice. See another book from about the same time