Three Main Points
1. Main idea.
Clubs, especially those private ones, are voluntary in the sense that their members possess the right of low-cost exit. On the other hand, coercion is necessary for fulfillment of common interest since clubs are formed to solve the issues that can be more effectively addressed collectively than privately. The coercion within a club can be regarded as accepted voluntarily because whoever does not agree with this coercion will exit at a low cost, even free. The possibility of exit increases the viability of coercive clubs. Consequently these characteristics of private clubs are not accidental but designed to make voluntarily collective action possible.
2. Demonstration of this idea.
The process of demonstration is conducted in three steps.
(1) Firstly, to explore the effect of exit in private club membership decision when the quality of club services are uncertain.
(2) Secondly, to extend this analysis to government as a club and treaty organizations as clubs of clubs.
(3) Finally, to take account of such circumstance that club services are joint-produced by club members via monetary and in kinds input as well.
The main conclusion is: “voluntariness, in the sense of low exit costs, is a characteristic of essentially all viable clubs in both the short and long run”.
3. Application of this logic in treaty organizations, in particular, EU.
In international society, those prospective members of treaty organizations (sovereign states) look more like members in a private club setting than citizens do within a government. To avoid the downside risk of granting coercive power to treaty organizations’ governing body, they prefer those organizations which they are free to exit even if these organizations advanced their interests less perfectly. This logic explains the predominance of “toothless treaty organizations” in the world.
Three comments
1. According to this paper, voluntariness in sense of low-cost exit makes a club more attractive to potential club members. It’s true especially for such organizations whose missions are focused on addressing certain specific issue. Coercions are relatively easy to be accepted in club services provision and is helpful to meet club members’ objective. As for those more general organizations, after having joined a treaty organization voluntarily via rational calculus showed in this paper, the member states usually still find many issues of their interests are only discussed without any agreement finally. When we apply the logic of voluntary association to diverse service production club, perhaps we will find the membership decision process is more complex.
2. Although it’s useful to look at both government and treaty organizations as clubs, we also know that international arena looks more like a “jungle” where national states’ government interact. From the perspective of some basic value of human being, I think at least to certain extent coercion over government as club members is not completely a bad thing, especially when this coercion makes citizens ruled by bad governments better off.
3. Club service and governmental service supplement each other within a country to meet citizens’ total demand. I’m wondering whether or not some mechanism with properties of global government is worth introduced into existing international club system.