No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Russell Hardin One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995. Pp. 228.
Review products
Russell Hardin One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995. Pp. 228.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Critical Notice
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 1997
References
1 That this is meant to be taken as a literal causal thesis is evidenced in Hardin's defense of its ‘realism.’ While he could claim that it is an ideal-typical construction meant to illuminate some aspects of human identifications, he instead maintains that like all social theories it purports to describe real processes of which the individuals described are often unaware (10-14).
2 Hardin himself provides an good discussion of the game-theoretical problems of the prisoners’ dilemma (where self interest leads two prisoners to refrain from striking a mutually beneficial cooperative deal) and its relation to coordination in his Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1982), ch. 10.
3 It is disappointing that Hardin did not take just one or two examples and work them in detail. As they stand, his reports of actual situations do not go beyond standard journalistic accounts. Here are summaries of his treatments (except for Quebec, which will be summarized later):
Bosnia. After discredited Communist leaders, notably Milosović, turned to nationalism to maintain their power, the region in and around Bosnia was doomed to conflict because Serbs and Croats must each rationally fear a preemptive strike by the other. The situation in Bosnia is especially precarious because of its ethnic mix, and it was tipped into violence by the ill considered 1991 declaration of independence by Szetbegović. The focus of this account — Hardin's most detailed — is on the leaders, who are described as ‘mobilizers of ethnicity.’
Northern Ireland. In the fight for independence the IRA formed itself for strategic purposes into autonomous cells lacking effective central control and mutually ignorant of each other's behavior. Hence they were prone to excesses or pursuit of violence on the part of individual cells for the particular purposes of its members. Violence was met with escalating counter violence.
Somalia. Clan leaders such as Mohammed Ali Mahdi and Mohammed Farah Aidid mobilized clan members in their power struggles between one another and the overthrown Somalian leader, Mohammed Siad Barre. The absence of an effective central authority and the ready availability of arms was central to making the resulting conflicts violent.
Hutus and Tutsis. The situation of extreme poverty and a history of ethnic animosities, many ‘cultivated’ by corrupt leaders such as Juvenal Habyarimana, made it hard to avoid conflict along ethnic lines, especially when the two ethnic groups are recognizably different, both in physical appearance and in traditional occupation.
4 One reason I think Hardin does not believe in the unencumbered self is that he does not need to, it being a matter of relative indifference how people come to have the preferences they do. In addition, while strongly disagreeing with normative communitarianism, he endorses ‘epistemological communitarianism’ which is a group based theory about ‘how we have become what we are’ (186-8). (Whether this is in tension with Hardin's location of himself as among the moral theorists ‘who stand outside some community’ (209) depends upon whether ‘some’ means ‘any’ or ‘some one.’)
5 In addition to exchanges in the daily press over a bill by the Quebec Government restricting the use of English-only advertising, a large number of intellectuals, both in Quebec and outside of it have been engaging in lively debates over the question of the nature of and limits to Quebec preservation of its franco heritage. Examples of a few collections containing pertinent contributions are: Carens, Joseph H. ed., Is Quebec Nationalism Just?: Perspectives from Anglophone Canada (Montreal: MeGillQueen's University Press 1995)Google Scholar; Gagnon, Alain-G. dir., Québec: état et société (Montreal: Éditions Québec/Amérique 1994)Google Scholar; Gagnon, Alain and Noël, Alain dir., L'espace québécois (Montreal: Éditions Québec/Amérique 1994)Google Scholar; Granatstein, J.L. and McNaught, Kenneth eds., ‘English Canada’ Speaks Out (Toronto: Doubleday Canada 1991)Google Scholar; Lafontant, Jean dir., L'état et les minorités (Saint-Boniface, MB: Les Éditions du Blé 1992)Google Scholar; Rocher, François and Smith, Miriam eds., New Trends in Canadian Federalism (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press 1995)Google Scholar; Seymour, Michel dir., Une nation peut-elle se donne la constitution de son choix? Philosophiques, Numéro Spécial: 19, 2 (1992)Google Scholar; Watts, Ronald L. and Brown, Douglas M. eds., Options for a New Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Taylor does not describe himself as a communitarian, perhaps because he fears association with the moral relativism of some of its proponents, but he clearly counts as a communitarian in contrast to the individualist perspective Hardin favors. A pertinent intervention by Taylor is his essay ‘Why Do Nations Have to Become States?’ which was first published in the proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Canadian Philosophical Association, Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation, French, Stanley ed., (Montreal: The Canadian Philosophical Association 1979) 19–35Google Scholar, reprinted in a collection by Taylor of some essays on similar themes, Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism (Montreal and Kingston: Queen's-MeGill University Press 1993) 40-58. See, too, Taylor's lead essay, The Politics of Recognition,’ in Gutman, Amy ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994) 25–73, esp. 52-9.Google Scholar
7 Hardin's specific targets of attack are actively political communitarians whom he distinguishes from philosophical communitarians, heaping vituperative scorn on the former while maintaining a stance of collegial disagreement with the later, but his language sometimes makes it hard to keep the two apart. Hardin's antipathy to communitarianism apparently leads him thus to label Will Kymlicka (ignoring the latter's explicitly individualistic orientation) due to Kymlicka's endorsement of some group rights (188, 208 ). No doubt some tenets of communitarianism are subject to criticism, but its shortcomings hardly merit whole scale dismissal. One has the impression that Hardin's philosophical identity is partly shaped by coordination on enmity toward the communitarians.
8 Macintyre, Alasdair Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1988) 361–2Google Scholar, and see 387-8. Though Hardin seems to be parodying Macintyre's title in one of his section headings (‘Whose Choices, Whose Theory,’ 10) the book itself is not cited by him, and there is no recognition by Hardin of Macintyre's attempt to distance himself from uncritical communitarians.
9 Walzer, Michael The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitments in the 20th Century (New York: Basic Books 1988)Google Scholar; Thick and Thin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1994); and see, too, his earlier Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987).
10 In addition to the interventions reflected in works by Taylor cited inn. 6 above, he has also intervened in the daily press, as for example in a much debated article for Montreal's La Presse, ‘Les ethnies dans une société “normale'” (21/22 novembre 1995).
11 See Collective Action, ch. 10 on the iterated prisoners’ dilemma.
12 Hardin, ‘Public Choice Versus Democracy,’ in Chapman, John W. and Wertheimer, Alan eds., Majorities and Minorities: Nomos 32 (New York: New York University Press 1990) 184–203Google Scholar. I suggest a way of confronting the Arrow paradoxes in my Democratic Theory and Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987) 62-4, and I discuss the approach of Downs and other critics in his tradition in ‘Homo Democraticus: A Counter Catallactic Perspective,’ Theoria 85 (1995) 111-25.
13 A number of people is ‘significant’ if it is large enough to carry the day or at least to ensure that the wishes of its members are accommodated acceptably to them, where this may be a majority, less than a majority, or more than a majority depending on the circumstances. Democratic solutions may involve majority voting, weighted voting, pursuing formal or informal means to reach consensus or to negotiate a compromise, or even delegating decision making to an acceptable, pro temp authority. What means are appropriately democratic or the most democratic means available may be determined by estimating which, in the circumstances, would best contribute to progress in democracy, defined by reference to a democratically ideal situation where either consensus has been achieved among all affected members in the situation or a mutually acceptable compromise has been negotiated, provided that neither outcome jeopardizes pursuit of either consensus building or negotiation in the future. I expand on these definitional points in Democratic Theory and Socialism, ch. 3.
14 Taylor, ‘Reconciling the Solitudes’ (in the collection by him of the same title). Some alternative attempts at interrogating national identifications in Canada/Quebec are Guy Laforest, De l'urge1Jce: textes politiques, 1995 (Montréal: Boréal l995), 52-63; and Webber, Jeremy Reimagining Canada (Kingston & Montreal: MeGill-Queen's Press 1994), ch. 6Google Scholar.
15 I treat some aspects of this task in ‘The Canada/Quebec Conundrum: A Trinational Perspective,’ in Coustitutional Forum 8, 4 (1997) 119-29, special issue in its Canada's Prospects Series, edited by Janet Ajzenstat and Caroline Bayard. A survey of the problem of Quebec and aboriginal sovereignty is by Eric Gourdeau, ‘Le Québec et la question autochtone.’ in Alain-G. Gagnon, ed., Québecétat et société, 329-55.