A. de Swaan. The Global Coordination Problem: Collective Action among Unequal States, Historical Social Research 48 (1): 213-225, 2023

The most pressing problems facing mankind today require for their solution some form of worldwide collective action at the level of states. In order to combat the global threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthy countries must cooperate to provide vaccines for people in low-in- come countries, if only to prevent these populations from becoming breeding grounds for new strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that will also endanger the richer nations. Another, even more pertinent case is the campaign against global warming, which requires concerted action by committed state regimes to curtail the worldwide emission of greenhouse gases. Such figurations give rise to the classic dilemmas of collective action. Read the article..