Several theories try to answer this question. For one, to engage in collective action is irrational – the reasonable person, it claims, leaves it to others to act on their behalf. For another, lack of interest is the problem – most people do not see any value in acting. For still others, ignorance of the opportunities for action and its power to advance interests explains inaction – a variant of this argument holds that people believe that there is no need for action because power-holders know better what their political community needs than they do. In all these explanations, the failure to act is a freely taken decision. They all insist that people do not use collective agency to claim a share in decisions because they do not wish to do so.

This chapter rejects this view. It argues that, in the main, citizens refrain from collective action not because they do not wish to speak but because they cannot – or because they believe they will be unable to make themselves heard. It notes that people with more resources are better able to act, a reality stressed by social movement theories. But it insists that access to resources, while it matters, is not the chief reason why people who enjoy formal democratic rights do not act to challenge power. Whether people act is shaped by access to power: people avoid acting when they believe they are powerless. They fear that the powerful will punish them or ignore them.

Their perceptions of powerlessness are not necessarily accurate: people may underestimate their power and so may avoid action which could gain them a share in decisions. But their failure to act is not a preference. In the main, people know that those who wield power over them ought to account and respond to them, but they avoid acting to achieve this accountability because they believe themselves too weak to achieve the share in decisions to which they know they are entitled. Before discussing the evidence for this claim, this chapter will discuss the rival explanations for the inaction of the many.

THEORIES OF INACTION

A celebrated explanation for limited participation in collective action is Olson's rational choice theory, mentioned in the previous chapter.